TakeMe2Space to launch AI computing satellite on SpaceX rocket on 1 October

TakeMe2Space, a space startup from India, will send its MOI-1A satellite to orbit on 1 October on a SpaceX rideshare flight, Transporter-18.

The Hyderabad company calls it India’s first orbital computing satellite, since it can analyse data in space and send back results rather than raw files, Reuters reported on Monday.

The satellite weighs less than 50kg and uses Nvidia’s Orin NX chips, which are designed for edge computing. Customers will load their own AI models onto it, founder and chief executive Ronak Samantray told Reuters.

When the satellite passes over an area they pick, the models process the data and send only the results down.

So far, 23 customers have booked space on the mission, the company said. They include mapping firms and schools, as well as businesses in farming, mining, supply chains and insurance. One of them is Little Place Labs, a US space data company.

With roughly 150 watts to work with, MOI-1A is a small edge computer rather than a full data centre. By contrast, Starcloud and SpaceX plan to fly the more powerful Nvidia chips used in data centres on the ground.

MOI-1A replaces MOI-1, which was lost on 12 January when the third stage of ISRO’s PSLV-C62 rocket failed. After the failure, the company took the first launch slot it could find on a SpaceX Falcon 9, ThePrint reported in May.

An earlier test satellite, MOI-TD, went up from Sriharikota on 30 December 2024. The company says it ran more than 20 tests in orbit, including AI tasks on apps sent up from the ground.

TakeMe2Space designs and builds most parts of its satellites in India. However, it buys propulsion systems, chips and solar cells from other suppliers.

Next, the startup plans bigger, networked satellites that serve many customers at once. It also wants to sell data storage in orbit to banks, other finance firms and defence clients as a backup to cloud providers on the ground.