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A Hyderabad-based startup called TakeMe2Space is preparing to send India’s first orbital computing satellite into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, putting Nvidia processors in low Earth orbit to handle AI workloads where the data actually lives. The mission, designated MOI-1A, is scheduled to fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission on October 1, 2026.
Instead of beaming massive raw datasets back to Earth for processing, customers upload AI models to the satellite and get only the refined insights sent back down.
What’s actually going up
MOI-1A is a 6U CubeSat weighing in at under 50 kg. The satellite carries Nvidia Orin NX edge-computing processors capable of delivering 117 trillion operations per second, or 117 TOPS. It also features a 9-band multispectral imager for Earth observation and 2 TB of onboard storage. The whole system runs on a power budget of roughly 150 watts.
TakeMe2Space founder Ronak Samantray has framed MOI-1A not as a data center in space but as a compact edge-computing node.
The satellite already has 23 customers lined up, spanning geographic information system firms, agricultural companies, mining operations, insurance providers, and educational institutions. US-based Little Place Labs is among the notable names showing interest.
The road to orbit wasn’t smooth
TakeMe2Space flew a technology demonstration payload on an ISRO PSLV mission in December 2024, which served as a proof of concept. The original MOI-1 satellite was lost in January 2026 when the PSLV-C62 launch failed.
TakeMe2Space, operating on approximately $5 to $5.6 million in seed funding, chose to rebuild and book a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 instead.
The bigger picture for orbital computing
By running AI inference directly on the satellite, TakeMe2Space aims to filter the noise in orbit, sending customers only processed insights rather than raw imagery.
TakeMe2Space has ambitious expansion plans beyond MOI-1A. The company is targeting Generation-2 satellites with 1,500 watts of compute capability and 100 TB of storage each, with deployment starting around 2027. The long-term vision involves building a constellation that delivers 50 kilowatts of orbital computing capacity by 2029.
Alongside the satellites themselves, the startup is developing supporting technologies including radiation-hardened components, advanced power systems, star trackers, and optical inter-satellite links.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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