Indian Startup to Launch Orbital Computing Satellite on SpaceX Rocket on October 1

Indian space startup TakeMe2Space plans to launch what it describes as the country’s first orbital computing satellite aboard a SpaceX rocket on October 1, a move aimed at processing data in orbit rather than transmitting raw information back to Earth, according to Reuters.

The company’s MOI-1A spacecraft is a sub-50 kg satellite carrying Nvidia Orin NX edge-computing processors. It is scheduled to fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission, the company said on Monday.

The model works by letting customers upload containerized AI models to the satellite. As MOI-1A passes over a specified area, it processes the data on board and transmits only the resulting analysis to Earth, rather than the full underlying dataset, founder and chief executive Ronak Samantray told Reuters.

TakeMe2Space said it has signed 23 customers for the mission, including geographic information system companies and educational institutions, with commercial users spanning agriculture, mining, supply-chain management and insurance. US-based space data analytics firm Little Place Labs is among them.

“The customer who sees value in our first-generation satellites is the one paying to download a lot of raw data and then do the compute,” Samantray said. “The reduction in the cost of not downloading it offsets the premium they pay for compute in orbit.”

Sources: Reuters (https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/indias-takeme2space-launch-orbital-computing-satellite-spacex-rocket-2026-09-28/) and StartupFeed (https://startupfeed.in/takeme2space-moi-1a-orbital-computing-satellite-spacex/) — both open in a new tab.