Galaxia Mission Systems (Galaxia) is making progress towards launching its MÖBIUS-1 software-defined satellite (SDS). The demonstration flight is scheduled for June 2025 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched from California, assuming that all goes to plan.
The $2.8 million MÖBIUS-1 project has been partially funded by a financial contribution from the Canadian Space Agency. The money was allocated in May 2023 under the CSA’s Space Technology Development Program (STDP) for “the first software-defined Earth observation (EO) platform.” MÖBIUS-1 is being entirely designed and built in Halifax.
According to a January 23, 2025 posting on Galaxia Founder/CEO Arad Gharagozli’s LinkedIn page, “This week Galaxia was packed with pretty exciting stuff (more than usual) – kicked off FlatSat campaign for MOBIUS-1 (aka Snowy, TinTin’s puppy) 🐶 – first of a kind and mighty software defined satellite (SDS) packed with loads of AI capabilities. Spacecraft is now fully integrated in the chassis for fit check. EPS, RF SATCOM, OBC and ADCS all operating nominally ✅ We will disassemble again before we do wireharnessing [sic] and do a final flight integration with solar panels on.”
By itself, this post is the kind of good news that any satellite manufacturer likes to share. But on a larger scale, Gharagozli’s report indicates progress towards a new type of satellite — not in terms of its spacecraft architecture but rather its capability to be highly flexible.
Galaxia’s ‘secret sauce’ can be found in the term ‘software-defined satellite’, which is powered by the company’s proprietary Raven OBC hardware and operating system. Like an iPhone that could be loaded with a myriad of apps to perform different functions, the planned MÖBIUS Earth observation satellite constellation in low Earth orbit (LEO) will be capable of being programmed by different users to perform different missions — and when those missions are done, the satellites can be reprogrammed to do other ones. Add the fact that each MÖBIUS satellite will have sufficient onboard processing power to support up to 50 simultaneous missions at a time, and that its processors will be able to do much of the data crunching up in orbit using federated machine learning architecture, and the cost of such missions can be reduced as low as $99 per orbit.
“Our vision is to change the way that computers operate in space, the way that has already been done for terrestrial applications,” said Gharagozli. “We want to provide a centralized space infrastructure so that people can focus on designing software and advanced applications as opposed to being too focused on the hardware side. This is why we are designing software-defined satellites. These are spacecraft that will be able to perform various applications and missions in space through a software stack that is available to our developers.” All told, Galaxia is on track to change the nature of satellite missions, and the cost to execute them. “We are moving forward with MÖBIUS to make massive changes in the EO landscape” Gharagozli said. “That’s a big one for us.”
