Constellation Space launches ML platform for satellite fleets

Seattle-based Constellation Space is rolling out the Constellation Platform, its flagship software for running fleets of satellites and the ground networks that serve them, according to GeekWire Startups's report by Alan Boyle on November 12, 2026. The platform uses machine learning to forecast how much data each satellite pass can carry and to help operators tune transmission settings and schedules around that forecast.

This piece covers what the platform does, the team and funding behind it, the customers already using an early version, and why the startup chose Seattle over San Francisco. It is written for satellite operators, ground-station teams, space-industry engineers and investors tracking the commercial low Earth orbit market.

01Machine learning for ground contact plans

The Constellation Platform is built for the growing number of satellite constellations in low Earth orbit. Keeping track of thousands of satellites, and of the best opportunities for downlinking data from each one, is becoming an increasingly complicated task for operators.

CEO Kamran Majid described the core of the product to GeekWire. "We build models in-house for things like weather, attenuation, signal jamming, demand … and synthesize all of that to help operators understand what their ground contact plan looks like in the future, and how to optimize their fleets," he said.

02From Starlink mission control to a six-person startup

Constellation Space was founded last year and draws on Majid's experience as a NASA engineering intern and as a software engineer on SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. "At Starlink, I saw firsthand how manual mission-control processes break down as constellations scale," he said.

Majid said he started the company "to help smaller teams get ahead of link failures instead of spending their time rebuilding pass plans and recovering from outages." His co-founders are chief technology officer Raaid Kabir, a veteran of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and Omeed Tehrani and Laith Altarabishi, both former software engineers at Capital One.

The company is still small. "We're a team of six people right now," Majid said. He described the move from SpaceX engineer to startup chief executive as "really interesting," with a shift from engineering work into more of a business role.

03Seed funding, AWS and $2.25 million in contracts

One year into its existence, Constellation Space has already gained traction. Several months ago, the startup said it raised $7.5 million in a seed round backed by Y Combinator, Nvidia, OpenAI, Samsung Next and other investors.

Majid said an early version of the Constellation Platform has attracted more than 10 customers, including Amazon Web Services. More than 20 academic institutions also use it. "Our annual contract value this year is $2.25 million," he said.

04Forecasting gigabytes per pass, up to 36% more data

The platform combines forecasts for the factors that affect satellite transmissions: space situational awareness, weather conditions, signal-to-noise ratios, signal jamming and bandwidth demand. From those inputs it predicts how many gigabytes of data can be transmitted during a given pass, and operators use that prediction to optimize transmission settings and schedules.

The machine-learning model is pre-trained on data from a global network of sensors. Once it is deployed, the model adapts to each fleet's specific hardware and ground stations. Constellation Space says satellite operators can boost the data downlinked per pass by as much as 36%.

That figure is the company's own claim, and GeekWire's report does not include independent measurements behind it. Operators evaluating the platform will want to check the gain against their own ground-station mix and hardware.

05First-principles thinking and a Seattle base

Majid said the mindset from SpaceX carried over to the startup. "The mindset is just 'first-principles thinking' about everything," he said, adding that the team tries to "eliminate all the requirements that don't make sense before you even start to think about solving the problem." He credited those tenets as important to the company's success so far.

The company is based in the Seattle area, where more than half of the world's satellites are built. As a Y Combinator company, the team spent a couple of months in San Francisco and felt "a lot of pressure from the community in SF to have everyone be in San Francisco," Majid said.

He said Seattle is becoming more and more of a hub for the space industry, with space companies moving there, opening headquarters or branching out to the region. "It's that, mixed in with Seattle just being known as a tech hub — and also, we all love Seattle," he said.