In Orbit swaps reentry for satellite AI, flight test slated Q1 2027

On the ground, a satellite operator today watches telemetry, the stream of raw numbers a spacecraft sends home, and decides what to do. In Orbit Aerospace wants the spacecraft to make many of those decisions itself. The Torrance, California, startup says its onboard AI can run a spacecraft's operations without waiting on ground control, and it is now winning government money to prove it.

The pivot began with a return trip that did not work out. In Orbit was founded in 2020 as an in-space logistics company building reentry vehicles. Its cofounders concluded that the market for bringing things back from orbit already had enough players. "We were just slightly too late," CEO Ryan Elliott said. The team then took on a different reentry problem. During descent, the plasma around a vehicle can block GPS and communications. If one side overheats, no one on the ground can see it or react in time.

In Orbit's answer is INTELLACT, a software-only system that uses the vehicle's existing hardware to monitor spacecraft health, carry out maneuvers and respond to anomalies on board. Its ground interface is built around recommendations: it tells operators what the situation means and what to do next, rather than handing them raw data. CTO Ishaan Patel described the goal as moving humans from "in the loop" to "on the loop," where "the ground operator is the architect of the mission." The first planned test is the AFRL/NASA HyperSTEP mission in Q1 2027, running in shadow mode, which means the system watches and advises without taking control.

NASA has awarded In Orbit a Phase I SBIR for spacecraft swarms. The Space Force has awarded a SpaceWERX Phase I STTR for low Earth orbit constellations, through its Adaptive and Intelligent Space Challenge, which funds early research into satellites that operate on their own in degraded or contested environments. About 29 proposals were selected from more than 300 submissions this summer, and In Orbit's was one of them. Both awards build on the earlier $1.8M Phase II STTR that financed INTELLACT's development for reentry and hypersonic vehicles.

So what changes, concretely? For a satellite operator, the change would be a shift in workload: a single ground team could oversee more spacecraft, because routine responses and anomaly handling would start on board, and the operators would receive a short list of options instead of a stream of numbers. Patel's argument is that constellations have grown too large for ground teams to watch every vehicle. The limits are just as concrete. INTELLACT has not flown yet, the company says it could raise more venture money within six months, and it has only reached the point of approaching commercial customers. Its first planned test, in shadow mode, will check whether its recommendations hold up before the software is given any control.