Orbital data center (ODC) startup Orbital Compute Inc. has selected German satellite manufacturer Reflex Aerospace as its satellite platform partner through a development agreement to deliver its Orbital-1 100,000-satellite ODC constellation.

Reflex will lead the integration of Orbital-1’s satellite, based on a proven bus design at Reflex, which will become exclusive to Orbital, in addition to the technologies used in its constellation.

“Reflex brings a proven satellite-bus platform and an advanced engineering team capable of adapting it for orbital computing: hundreds of kilowatts of power, substantial heat rejection and volume production designed in from day one,” Euwyn Poon, founder and CEO of Orbital, told DCD. “Data center developers are competing for scarce power, land and water. Space offers a path to scale beyond those terrestrial constraints, with abundant solar energy – but capturing that opportunity requires a fundamentally new kind of spacecraft.”

Engineering teams at Orbital based in Los Angeles will work alongside Reflex’s team in Berlin to establish a single, integrated group. Together, they plan to produce a satellite with power levels approaching 250kW, which Orbital has previously said will deliver 100kW compute, adding up to a total of 10GW across the 100,000-strong planned constellation.

“Our model is to move at maximum speed by working with the best in the world at every layer, from spacecraft platforms to manufacturing to launch,” Poon said in a statement. “Reflex, as a proven European platform builder, is a cornerstone of that model, and we’re proud to be its first US customer.”

Orbital’s pathfinder demonstration satellite is intended to fly in 2027, carrying Nvidia’s Blackwell chip to test GPU operation, radiation tolerance, thermal performance, and data downlink. Poon has previously said this demonstrator would be “maybe one one-hundredth the size” of the Orbital-1 satellites it is planning.

The company filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its ODC constellation in early July, and is still awaiting the regulator’s approval. The filing was made just a few weeks before the FCC voted to overhaul its licensing process into an “assembly line” model with a “presumed acceptable framework” that would grant applications such as Orbital’s immediately without the traditional process of cross-examination.

In mid-June, Orbital closed its pre-seed round, raising $5 million, which included 15 investors.