The first Malaysian individual to send a satellite.
Not a national space agency, not a corporation. KENSAT is the first satellite from a Malaysian individual — proving that orbit is now within reach.
First open source AI satellite in orbit
Built and launched by the first Malaysian individual to send a satellite to space.
KENSAT is a 2U CubeSat carrying Gemma 3, a real open-weights language model, into low earth orbit. It thinks in space, and beams the answer back to anyone listening.
One satellite. One mind in the sky.
Altitude
510 km
Orbit
Sun-synchronous
Form factor
2U CubeSat
Origin
Malaysia
01 · Where is KENSATstatusPre-launch
─ sun-synchronous orbit · 510 km · one orbit ≈ 95 min
□ launch site · drag to rotate
34.74°N 120.57°W · Vandenberg Space Force Base, CaliforniaAwaiting launch. Once KENSAT is in orbit, the globe will follow its live position.
02 · Mission overview
Why KENSAT?
A language model, thinking in space.
Almost every AI in orbit today belongs to a government, a defense program, or a billion-dollar company. KENSAT carries its own — a real model running onboard.
Everyone should have an AI that is sovereign.
A computer that no one else can access or switch off. Sovereign compute is the new sovereign money — and it shouldn't be reserved for states and corporations.
A demonstration of edge AI in space.
Running real inference on hardware in orbit, far from any data center, proves that capable AI can live at the edge — even the highest edge there is.
03 · What is on KENSAT6 modules
From the antennas down to the bus.
Antennas01/06
The radio system's tape-measure antennas — KENSAT's voice and ears.
- —UHF antennas built from spring-steel tape strips
- —Stowed flat against the body for launch
- —No motors, no actuators, no moving parts that can fail
Deployment system02/06
The moment of release — antennas spring open the instant KENSAT leaves its deployer.
- —Burn-wire release frees the stowed antennas
- —Tape strips snap to full length on their own
- —Watch them open up as the satellite tumbles free
Payload board03/06
The brain of the spacecraft — where the AI actually runs.
- —NVIDIA Jetson Orin — runs Gemma 3, the onboard language model
- —Radio systems for uplink and downlink
- —IMU for attitude sensing and orientation
EPS — power system04/06
Electrical power: storing and distributing every watt onboard.
- —4× rechargeable batteries
- —Charging from body-mounted solar panels
PPM05/06
Power protection & management — keeping the bus safe and stable.
- —PIC24 microcontroller handles all peripheral operations
- —Guards the spacecraft against power faults
Motherboard06/06
The backbone everything plugs into — the CubeSat bus.
- —Standard CubeSat bus interconnect
- —Ties the payload, EPS, and radios into one stack
04 · AI model · previewground relay · kensat@earthlinked
Talk to a mind in orbit.
Gemma 3, Google's open language model, runs onboard KENSAT. Send a message up, and the answer is computed 510 km above you, then beamed back down.
Pre-launch: replies come from an identical ground copy of the onboard Gemma 3 model. After launch, inference moves to orbit.
GROUND>kensat, where are you right now?
KENSAT>On the ground at Vandenberg, waiting for my ride to 510 km. After launch, every answer gets computed on the onboard GPU and beamed down with radio — ask me anything while we wait.
05 · Why KENSATRunning an AI — and a satellite — at the edge.
The big idea
What if the world's frontier models ran in orbit?
Imagine reaching out to OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, or Anthropic's Claude to run their models on a data center in space. That's the launch.
Running the AI model
T01Gemma 3, Google's open-weights language model, runs onboard the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano — inference performed in orbit, not on the ground.
Can you operate a satellite using AI?
T02KENSAT is a testbed for letting an onboard model help run the spacecraft itself.
Radiation in SSO
T03Test the effects of radiation in sun-synchronous orbit — the specific orbit and altitude we care about — on the compute hardware.
Thermal
T04Characterize how the payload behaves thermally through the heat and cold of every orbit.
06 · Gallery04 photos