The space sector is currently undergoing a technological disruption featured by onboard intelligence. By processing the informationcaptured from the space directly onboard the spacecrafts with advanced AI techniques, onboard intelligence has the potential to realize more efficient, agile, autonomous, and reconfigurable Earth Observation (EO) systems. By considering the software and hardware aspects in a coordinated manner, it becomes possible to develop a robust and efficient onboard intelligence system for Earth Observation applications.The objective of the activity is to establish an agile framework enabling rapid and responsive prototyping of smart payloads based on joint Software and Hardware developments.