Someone Just Told a Satellite in Space to Play ‘Doom,’ and It Actually Worked
· Vice
People have long played the video game Doom on a wild array of objects, from pregnancy tests to a clump of brain cells. So it’s not surprising to hear that in 2025, a software developer from Iceland got Doom to run on the European Space Agency’s OPS-SAT satellite. Now, almost exactly a year later, the satellite did it again, only this time it did it via voice command, a first for any satellite.
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Tanagra Space, an amateur radio group based in Oslo, transmitted a voice command over the 23 cm radio band to ESA’s experimental OPS-SAT PRETTY satellite. The message was “PRETTY PLAY DOOM.” The satellite used onboard AI to capture the radio signal, decode it from the noise, transcribe the speech, recognize the command, and then launch the 1993 demon-slaying classic Doom.
To prove that it had done it, the satellite sent back a digital “postcard” showing that it was, in fact, running Doom.
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As per Tanagra Space, they pulled off the trick twice in one day: first using a synthesized voice loop, and later with an actual human speaking live into a microphone. Of course, this innovation has real practical applications. Satellites capable of understanding natural language or recognizing audio-style patterns could listen for emergency mayday calls from stranded ships or detect unforeseen astronomical phenomena like gamma-ray bursts on the fly.
But that’s all for the future. For now, we’ve got satellites up in space playing video games when they should be conducting important research. How irresponsible.
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