A smart satellite system is capable of decision making and prioritization on the fly to optimize the use of downlink bandwidth to deliver prioritized data based upon opportunity and the resources of available payloads. By providing a satellite system with substantial processing power and a level of autonomy, the satellite is able to make decisions about capturing imagery data, including image data processing, object detection, image segmentation, and re-orientation of the satellite based upon the opportunity, from the satellite's perspective, for capturing image data of areas or objects of interest. Through the use of machine learning and in-orbit image analysis, the satellite may transmit only a subset of the captured images, portions of the captured images, or the result of image analysis, thereby efficiently using the downlink communication channel.