Sophia Space, a leader in space-based edge computing, announced it has selected Apex,  the leading supplier of productized satellite platforms, to supply a satellite bus to bring real-time orbital computing to enterprise, government and defense customers.

Sophia Space will fly one of Apex's Nova bus platforms for a demo mission in 2027, demonstrating Sophia Space's TILE (Thermal Integrated LEO Edge) compute modules. The deal comes at a pivotal moment, as the volume of data generated in orbit grows, driven by new constellations designed to deliver persistent Earth observation, communications, security and scientific insights. Traditional approaches, reliant on downlinking petabytes of data to ground stations, simply cannot keep pace with mission-critical timelines, making a new layer of on orbit edge processing essential.

"This is a force multiplier for Sophia Space's mission to bring orbital computing mainstream," said Rob DeMillo, CEO and Co-Founder of Sophia Space. "With Apex as our strategic bus supplier, we're bringing computing into orbit where it's needed most. This isn't just about faster data. It's about enabling satellites to make intelligent decisions autonomously, accelerating innovation across defense, commercial space, and Earth observation industries."

"Apex was built to power innovative space missions, helping teams move from breakthrough technology to operational spacecraft faster," said Ian Cinnamon, CoFounder & CEO of Apex. "Sophia's vision for real-time orbital computing is exactly the kind of mission our Nova platform is designed to support, giving them a reliable, scalable path to bring edge computing capabilities to orbit."

The announcement fast-forwards Sophia's on-orbit success, closing a critical gap in the emerging space-based edge computing market, enabling faster responses in national defense, disaster management, Earth observation, and commercial operations where latency and bandwidth are limiting factors.

"We're building the backbone for the next era of space-to-space and space-to-Earth infrastructure," added Leon Alkalai, CTO and Founder of Sophia Space. "With Apex as a collaborator, satellites become autonomous computing hubs, able to act on data the moment it's generated."

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