Rama Afullo's first reaction was naturally, 'The Let's GOOOO,' he said. The company founded by Afullo, Satlyt, is developing software in an attempt to turn existing satellites into a data processing network, similar to the concept of an orbital data center. And he has just taken another step closer to this goal.

After 13 months of work, the company completed a successful test earlier this month. This test, in collaboration with the University of Houston, was part of a research project funded by NASA. The results indicate that the startup's software is capable of assigning tasks to different computers in orbit based on communication conditions and available computing power.

He said that the company's goal is to create a software that can connect multiple satellites for sharing computing tasks. Afullo told TechCrunch that system users “only need to define permissions, priorities, and operational restrictions,” and the software will make decisions on its own within these constraints. This software has already been deployed on three satellites in orbit, and this test is the first step towards realizing this vision. Although the test utilized research funded by NASA, NASA has not yet selected it for any specific tasks, nor has it chosen to deploy this technology.

Afullo indicates that the constraints faced by the NASA task are the same as the problems Satlyt hopes to solve: "limited computing power, intermittent communication interruptions, and the need to transmit useful information back to people."

In this test, the company set up a simulated network consisting of four computers, four users, and eight services. Subsequently, the software was evaluated for how it distributed and executed tasks on these computers, taking into account computational power and communication availability. Within a spacecraft in orbit, only one physical computer ran the software—the other three were merely simulation devices—that ultimately transmitted the results back to Earth. The test proved that the Satlyt software is capable of generating plans on orbital hardware, but more tests are needed to observe how these computers communicate with each other in practice when multiple physical computers are used.

He said, "This discovery represents a trade-off." One of the solutions is the most effective, but it also requires more computing power than the other options.

Nevertheless, Satlyt made it into the top five of TechCrunch Disrupt Battle this year, and Afullo still considers this test a victory. He said, "This is a building block towards satellite-based shared computing efforts."

NASA already has a technical network designed to transmit data in space even in the face of communication link delays. This technology was put into use earlier this year and has already been tested on aircraft.

Afullo, who has worked at Google and SpaceX, founded Satlyt in 2024 with the goal of turning spacecraft into virtual data centers. Its software helps operators run AI and other applications on board, keeping data processing as close to the data collection sites as possible, thereby reducing reliance on downlink communications—i.e., the process by which satellites transmit data back to Earth—as well as the ground-based analysis that is primarily done manually.

For example, if a spacecraft were to detect a wildfire on Earth, such software could help it transmit relevant information more quickly. He said, "The goal is to deliver useful answers to people more swiftly and make better use of the limited communication window. This experiment tested a planning component within this broader capability."

However, this does not mean that the experiment was a failure. He said, "Software development, on-board execution, and the transmission of output results were all successful."

However, Afullo indicates that there is still a great deal of work to be done. "We still need available communication links, permission from the operating parties, secure transmission, resource scheduling, and the ability to recover in cases where computer connections are unavailable." They hope to be able to launch and deploy in other environments beyond low Earth orbit in the near future.