Rendering of the Aptos terminal. Photo: Aptos Orbital

New company in the satellite tech space Aptos Orbital debuted a terminal to allow satellites to run powerful AI on orbit. The Aptos terminal announced Tuesday is a device for satellites that combines space-hardened processing, connectivity, and cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

The intent is to provide more persistent communication with satellites when they cannot be reached by ground stations. Aptos said this onboard terminal allows for connection anywhere. The terminal is designed to deploy ground cloud services directly to the satellites, “making them agile orbital nodes for earthbound networks.”

The company said that it has secured eight customers representing more than $100 million in commitments. Its website lists the logos of Astroscale, True Anomaly, Lumen Orbit, Rebel Space, Think Orbital, Synmax, EnduroSat, and Spire. 

“Today’s satellites are siloed from modern cloud environments, hampered by the lack of onboard compute power, and have multi-hour coverage gaps. At Aptos Orbital, we are changing that,” Yonatan Winetruab, founder of Aptos said in a release. “Our goal is to make satellites as intelligent and accessible as any computer on Earth. By putting AI onboard, we can process live satellite data at the source and transmit the processed, actionable information back to Earth.”