In November 2018, an ESA-led team came to CERN to test many space components with one of the most energetic radiation beams available on earth: the lead-ion beam delivered by CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator. Ultra-high energy (UHE) heavy ion beams can be very useful to simulate high-energy Galactic cosmic rays and perform qualification tests in air and without opening the equipment being tested.

One of the tests involved Intel’s new Myriad 2 artificial intelligence (AI) chip, considered to perform in-orbit image processing on future space missions, reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent back to earth. On 2 September 2020, Vega flight VV16 lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, carrying Myriad 2, Intel’s new Artificial Intelligence chip, tested at CERN.