Parsimoni successfully deployed a pure-OCaml CCSDS protocol stack called Borealis to low Earth orbit on DPhi Space's ClusterGate-2 satellite on April 23, 2026. The stack implements end-to-end encrypted command and control with post-quantum key rotation (ML-DSA-65) via OTAR — claimed to be the first public in-orbit demonstration of post-quantum OTAR. OCaml was chosen for memory safety (eliminating the ~70% of CVEs from memory corruption in C/C++), with formally verified cryptographic primitives and GADT-encoded protocol state machines. The post also covers OxCaml (Jane Street's compiler branch), which uses locality and stack allocation annotations to reduce p99.9 dispatch latency from 29ns to 9ns and eliminate GC pressure entirely on the CCSDS hot path. The system runs on an Arm Cortex-A53 SoC as a statically linked Docker image, leveraging MirageOS libraries that have been in production for a decade. Future work focuses on fleet management, signed updates, and payload isolation across multiple satellites.
