Following on from digital services, taxation and politics, Sven Clement is now setting its sights on Earth’s orbit. The Pirate Party MP has taken the helm at Nova Lux Orbital, a company that aims to build what it describes as Europe’s first sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure in orbit. The public limited company was incorporated on 9 July. At the time of its incorporation, its sole shareholder was Aegoceros, the personal holding company managed by Sven Clement. He has also been appointed sole director of Nova Lux Orbital.

The project stems from a bandwidth issue. According to a presentation for investors, 98% of the data produced by satellites never reaches Earth. Observation sensors, synthetic aperture radars and hyperspectral instruments generate more data than they can transmit during their brief communication windows with ground stations.

Nova Lux Orbital therefore aims to move data processing to where the data is generated. Rather than transmitting particularly large raw images, the satellites would use AI models to directly identify relevant information: a ship’s position, changes to infrastructure, a suspicious signal or an alert intended for defence services. Only the result would then be sent back to Earth. The company sums up its ambition in a single phrase: to build satellites “that think, not just photograph”.

The proposed architecture is based on 220-kilo satellites, each carrying 20 Nvidia Jetson AGX Orin modules. Ultimately, 33 satellites would be distributed across three orbital planes at an altitude of approximately 525km. They would communicate with one another via optical links to form a single distributed computing system: each satellite would constitute a node, and the entire constellation would form the “cluster”.

A first mission in 2027

Development must proceed in stages. An initial mission, named Spark, has been announced for the third quarter of 2027. It is intended to demonstrate that AI calculations can be carried out in orbit using the selected components. An interim commercial mission, Forge, is then planned for early 2028, prior to the gradual deployment of the NLO-Mini constellation from 2029 onwards. The full network is currently projected for 2032. These deadlines remain as stated by the company and depend, in particular, on funding, technical developments and launch opportunities.

Nova Lux Orbital is seeking to raise €5m through a Safe, an instrument that is set to be converted into shares at a later date. The closing of this seed funding round is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. The company hopes to supplement this with around €2m in non-dilutive public funding, primarily from Luxembourg’s research and development schemes and programmes run by the European Space Agency (Esa).

The investor presentation outlines three cooperation agreements. At this stage, these consist of memoranda of understanding, letters of cooperation or collaboration frameworks, and not announced commercial orders.

An engineer on the Lunar Gateway programme

Sven Clement is responsible for commercial, financial, institutional and partnership-related matters. The dossier lists Josh Westbrock, a senior engineer at Northrop Grumman working on the Halo module of the Lunar Gateway – Nasa’s future lunar station – as co-founder and chief technology officer. David Doerfel, a former member of the Luxembourg Armed Forces, advises the team on defence operations, whilst Swen Roschlau advises on strategy and fundraising.

However, this operational structure does not yet correspond to the shareholding structure recorded at the time of incorporation: Aegoceros remains, at this stage, the sole shareholder of Nova Lux Orbital, and Sven Clement, its sole director. The arrival of investors and the conversion of financing instruments would lead to the creation of a board of directors comprising between three and five members.

Still at the preparatory stage

The chosen field holds great promise, but there is still a long way to go before reaching orbit. The articles of association set out a very broad scope for Nova Lux Orbital, covering the design, launch and operation of satellites, in-orbit data processing, on-board AI, inter-satellite communications and services aimed in particular at institutional and defence clients.

They do, however, specify that the company will not be able to commence any space-related activities subject to authorisation until it has received the go-ahead from the relevant minister. Until the necessary licences have been obtained, it must confine itself to research, intellectual property, funding and preparatory work. Nova Lux Orbital therefore has its legal framework and its flight plan in place. It now needs to raise capital, validate its technology and obtain the necessary authorisations before it can truly set out to conquer space.