Singapore (VNA) – Singapore will develop its first satellite for the Home Team, scheduled for launch in 2029, to enhance its capacity to respond to emergencies.
The satellite, named Xplorer, weighing about 100kg, will operate in near-equatorial orbit and be equipped with sensors to detect toxic gases such as ammonia, thereby assisting the Singapore Civil Defence Force in responding more quickly to dangerous incidents, Coordinating Minister for National Security K Shanmugam, who is also Home Affairs Minister, said on April 28.
The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) is collaborating with the new National Space Agency of Singapore (NSAS) to research the application of space technology in strengthening public safety. Simultaneously, it is also working with corporations such as Nvidia and French company Mistral AI to develop artificial intelligence (AI) systems to serve this force.
Within the framework of the Milipol TechX Summit (MTX) 2026, Shanmugam stated that HTX will launch a humanoid robotics centre in September to train robots for high-risk tasks such as handling hazardous materials and firefighting.
According to the official, the geopolitical landscape is profoundly changing the global technology ecosystem as supply chains are being restructured and technology is increasingly being "weaponised", creating new attack risks, especially in the field of cybersecurity. He emphasised that advanced AI models can shorten the time from vulnerability detection to exploitation from several months to just a few hours, leaving defence forces with almost no time to react. Previously, the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore issued a warning about the risks from next-generation AI models.
In response, HTX, in collaboration with partners such as ST Engineering, Google, Nvidia, and Nutanix is developing Singapore's first sovereign, NGINE, a GPU-powered AI infrastructure. HTX is also expanding the Phoenix big language model, with Phoenix Small already deployed and Phoenix Medium expected to launch with image and document analysis capabilities. In addition, Singapore is strengthening security testing through activities such as the DEF CON Singapore, a hacking conference, held concurrently with MTX, to detect vulnerabilities early and reinforce systems before real-world operation./.
