Laurynas Mačiulis is a space entrepreneur and engineer with over 12 years of experience in the aerospace industry. He started his career in space from a research internship at NASA AMES in 2012 after which he took a role as the lead engineer of the first Lithuanian satellite mission “LituanicaSAT-1”. He was a lead systems engineer of the follow up green monopropellant demonstration CubeSat mission called “LituanicaSAT-2”.

In 2014 he co-founded NanoAvionics – the first space start-up company in Lithuania where he took the role of CTO for three years and was responsible for product and technology development. In 2022 Nano Avionics was sold to Kongsberg Group for 67M$. Laurynas acquired his PhD degree in mechanical engineering for his work on thermal design optimization of small satellites from VilniusTECH university in 2021. He co-founded Astrolight in 2019 with the vision to connect space and Earth with high speed laser communication links.