Lithuania Bets on Lasers to Punch Above Its Weight in Space Tech

The Baltic country is banking on light-speed innovation to carve a place in a market long dominated by global giants.

Vilnius doesn’t look like your typical gateway to space. It’s a small city, in a small country, with a population less than that of Chicago’s suburbs. But step into a Soviet-era corridor at Vilnius University, and the buzz of something far more futuristic begins to hum.

That’s where Astrolight, a Lithuanian start-up founded just six years ago, is quietly working on something big: invisible internet highways in the sky. They’re building laser communication systems designed to connect satellites and Earth faster than ever before—faster, safer, and impossible to jam. And they’re not just dreaming about the future. They’re getting backing from both investors and NATO.

Astrolight recently raised €2.8 million in funding to scale up their tech. With an estimated 70,000 satellites expected to launch globally over the next five years, they see an opening—and they’re sprinting toward it.

A Laser Focus on a Crowded Sky

Laurynas Maciulis, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, doesn’t mince words. “We’re not trying to copy what others are doing. We’re trying to make communication feel like a beam of light—pure and uninterrupted.”

The idea is simple on paper: ditch radio frequencies, which are crowded, slower, and more prone to interception, and use light to send data instead. Laser links offer far more bandwidth and higher security.

But, of course, it’s not that simple in practice.

Building a laser system that can hit a moving satellite from Earth is no joke. The atmosphere messes with it. Clouds block it. Precise alignment is essential. And that’s just the civilian version.

One paragraph. One sentence. To drive it home: They’re also making it military-ready.

Defence Projects Are Quietly Driving Growth

Turns out, NATO’s paying attention. Since 2023, Astrolight has been part of NATO’s DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) initiative, which supports civilian tech with defense potential.

Three years ago, the Lithuanian Navy came knocking. They needed a silent way for ships to talk when radios were off during covert ops. Astrolight said sure, we can do that—because, as Maciulis puts it, “we already do it for space.”

So they built it.

That same ultra-secure, laser-based communication now links naval vessels under radio silence. It’s a neat crossover from sky to sea—and it’s only the beginning.

• Laser links are nearly impossible to jam

• They can move sensitive data securely between fast-moving targets

• They sidestep radio frequency limits entirely

This isn’t theoretical. It’s in use.

A Small Country With a Global Signal

Lithuania is a tiny player in global aerospace by most measures. No big national space agency. No billionaires launching rockets. No sprawling spaceports.

But it does have ambition. And it’s using the tools it has—top-notch universities, EU funding, and smart, hungry engineers.

Astrolight’s lab might be housed in an old concrete building, but its ambitions are crystal clear. “This is about Europe building its own tech backbone,” Maciulis says.

And Europe wants alternatives. With much of the space communication infrastructure still dominated by U.S. players—SpaceX’s Starlink being the elephant in orbit—EU states are looking for homegrown options. Lithuania sees an opening.

Here’s how it stacks up:

Numbers can be humbling. But Lithuania is betting it doesn’t need hundreds of launches to make its mark—it needs a niche. Laser communication might just be it.

A Bet on Civilian and Military Demand

Astrolight is playing both sides—civil and military. And they’re not shy about it.

Commercially, laser links can supercharge Earth observation satellites, cloud networks, and autonomous systems. Think crop-monitoring drones sending live feedback, or satellites relaying wildfire data in real time with zero lag.

But defence is where the urgency lies.

As tensions simmer across Eastern Europe, Lithuania—bordering Russia and Belarus—feels exposed. Investments in dual-use technologies aren’t optional; they’re part of national resilience.

Maciulis puts it bluntly: “Every NATO country wants its own secure pipeline in the sky.”

Astrolight wants to build it.

Engineering at Light-Speed, But Keeping It Local

There’s another twist here: Astrolight isn’t outsourcing its brains. Almost all the R&D is staying put in Vilnius. That matters in a world where tech sovereignty is becoming a big deal.

“People think you have to be in Silicon Valley to build these things,” says one of their senior engineers. “But honestly, we get more done here. Less noise. More coffee.”

And Vilnius, while compact, has quietly become a magnet for Baltic tech talent. The city offers a mix of EU regulation, cheap office space, and university-fed talent pools. Plus, fewer distractions than Berlin or London.

Just one sentence here. Because it matters.

They’re doing this without flashy offices or corporate puff.

What’s Next in the Laser Race

With funding in hand and NATO backing their prototypes, Astrolight’s next move is to scale testing. That includes space trials for satellite-to-ground links and expanding their naval applications with other Baltic states.

It’s not a race without rivals. US and Israeli firms are also deep into laser tech, and competition is fierce. But Maciulis believes their niche—smaller, leaner systems that work in tight military contexts—can hold its own.

And there’s something kind of poetic about it. A country that used to be on the receiving end of Cold War surveillance is now trying to shape the future of secure communication.

They’re not shouting it from rooftops. They’re pointing lasers into the sky.