Canada's Kepler partners with Sophia to test space GPU computing.

The largest scale computing cluster in orbit at present was launched by Canadian company Kepler Communications in January of this year. It consists of 10 satellites in orbit carrying approximately 40 NVIDIA Orin edge processors, and is interconnected through a laser communication network. The company currently has 18 clients and announced its latest partner on Monday: the startup Sofia Aerospace. The latter will test its proprietary orbital computing software on Kepler's satellite constellation. According to the new agreement, Sofia will upload its self-developed operating system to one of Kepler's satellites and attempt deployment and configuration on 6 GPUs across two spacecraft. Such operations are standard in ground data centers but are being attempted for the first time in space orbit. Ensuring stable operation of the software in orbit will be a key risk validation process for Sofia before the planned launch of their first satellite by the end of 2027.