MIT Technology Review Our writers will help you to understand the future of technology by untangling its complexity. More from this series can be read here .
Elon Musk filed a request with the US Federal Communications Commission in January to launch as many data centres into Earth orbit as possible.
What is the goal? The goal? To unleash AI’s full potential without creating an ecological crisis on Earth. Could it really work?
SpaceX is just the latest high-tech company to extol the benefits of orbital computing. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said last year that large-scale computer systems would be developed in space. Google plans to launch data-processing satellites.
It hopes to have a constellation of at least 80 test satellites launched as soon as next year. Starcloud from Washington State launched in November a satellite with an Nvidia H100 high-performance GPU. This was the first test orbital of a advanced AI chip. By 2030, the company plans to have orbiting data centres as big as Earth-based ones.
Some people believe it makes sense to put data centers into space. Current AI growth is straining the energy grids, and increasing the need for water to cool computers. The growing number of data centers in communities near them is causing concern about the rising costs of resources.
According to advocates, water and energy issues would be resolved in space.
Space-borne data centres would be able to access solar energy without interruption in orbits that are constantly lit by the sun. Moreover, any excess heat produced by the data centers could be expelled easily into space’s cold vacuum.
With the costs of space launches dropping and the promise that mega-rockets like SpaceX’s Starship will push prices lower still, it could come a time when moving data centers to space is a good business decision. Some critics say that there are a number of technical hurdles to overcome, but others believe they will be possible in the near future. Four things are needed to turn space-based data centres into a reality.
Heat transport
AI data centres produce heat. It might appear that space is the best way to get rid of heat without wasting a lot of water. It’s not as simple as it seems.
In order to get enough power to operate 24-7, the data center in space would need to always be illuminated, always circle the Earth from pole-to-pole, and not ever hide in the shadow of the Earth. In that orbit, equipment temperature would not drop below 80 degrees Celsius, as this is too high for electronic devices to function safely over the long-term.
It is surprising how difficult it can be to remove the heat from a space-based system. Lilly Eichinger is the CEO of Austrian startup Satellives. She says that thermal management and cooling are a major problem in space.
Heat is dissipated on Earth primarily through convection.
This process relies heavily upon the flow of liquids and gases like water and air. Radiation is the only way to remove heat in the vacuum of outer space.
To safely remove the heat generated by computers and what is absorbed from sunlight, large surfaces are required. It is harder to get all of the heat from a satellite into outer space if it’s bulky.
Yves Durand says technology is already available to solve the problem.
The firm has developed an earlier system that transfers heat from inside a satellite to exterior radiators using a mechanical pumps. Durand conducted a feasibility study in 2024 on the space-based data center, and found that, despite challenges, Europe should be able to launch gigawatt data centers into orbit by 2050. They would be much larger than SpaceX’s plans, with solar arrays that are hundreds of meters long–bigger than the International Space Station.
The computer chips can survive a nuclear attack
Space around Earth is continually battered and slashed by solar radiation. The magnetosphere and atmosphere of Earth protects humans on Earth from the corrosive mixture.
The further you travel from Earth, the less effective this protection is. The frequent radiation exposure of aircraft crews at cruise altitudes, when the atmosphere is thinner and less protective, increases their risk for cancer.
Ken Mai, principal systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in the electrical and computer engineering department, said that high levels of radiation can cause three different types of electronic problems in space.
When charged particles strike memory chips or devices, a phenomenon known as’single-event upsets’ can lead to bit flips. This corrupts stored data. Ionizing radiation damages electronics over time and degrades performance. Mai says that a charged particles can sometimes physically move atoms in the chip when they strike it. This causes permanent damage.
Computers launched into space have traditionally been subjected to years of rigorous testing, and they were designed specifically to handle the radiation in Earth orbit. The space-hardened electronic devices are expensive and lag behind in performance compared to the latest Earth-based computers. It is risky to launch conventional chips.
Durand claims that the latest computer chips are more radiation resistant than older systems. Nvidia announced in March that its hardware, which includes a new GPU is “bringing AI computation to orbital data centres.”
Chen Su, Nvidia’s director of edge AI Marketing, said MIT Technology Review“Nvidia Systems are commercially available off-the-shelf, but radiation resistance is achieved by the systems themselves, not just through the use of radiation-hardened Silicon.” The satellite maker increased the chip’s resiliency using shielding, error-detecting software, and architectural designs that combined consumer-grade products with hardened, bespoke technologies.
Mai insists that data crunching chips is only one part of the problem. Data centers will also require memory and storage, which can be damaged by radiation. Operators would also need to be able to change things or adapt as problems arise.
It is not clear if robots and astronaut missions can be used to maintain large orbiting data centres.
Mai says that you don’t just need a space to build a datacenter, but you also need extra parts and the ability to reconfigure it when something breaks. It’s an extremely difficult problem, because you can get free power and energy in space but also face a number of other disadvantages. These problems could outweigh any benefits that come from building a datacenter in space.
There is also the possibility of catastrophic losses.
Satellites are susceptible to radiation overload during periods of extreme space weather. This can cause their electronic components to be destroyed. Satellites have been relatively spared the worst effects of a sun that has recently passed through its most active 11-year cycle. Experts warn, however, that the Earth hasn’t yet experienced all the solar power the sun can deliver.
There are many who doubt that the new low-cost space systems dominating Earth’s orbit today will be able to withstand such a solar storm.
A plan to dodge space debris
Experts in space sustainability are concerned about both large orbiting data centres, such as the ones proposed by Thales Alenia Space, and mega constellations of satellites. Satellites are already a lot in the space surrounding Earth. Starlink satellites perform thousands of collision-avoidance maneuvers each year in order to avoid debris or other spacecraft. More debris in orbit increases the risk of an impact that could result in thousands of fragments.
The solar arrays on large structures, with solar panels covering hundreds of square meters each, would be damaged by small space debris. This would eventually degrade their performance and add more debris to orbit. Greg Vialle of Lunexus Space told Reuters that it might not be possible to safely operate one million satellites at low Earth orbit (the region of space between 2,000 and 3,000 kilometers in altitude). This is because they would need to communicate with each other to navigate around them.
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Vialle says that you can put four or five thousand satellites into one shell. If you add up all of the low-Earth orbit shells, that’s a maximum number of 240,000 satellites.
He says that spacecraft should be able pass one another at a distance of safety to prevent collisions.
He adds, “You need to also be able get things up into higher orbits and down to deorbit.” To do this safely, you’ll need a minimum of 10 km between satellites.
Mega constellations like Starlink are able to be packed closer together because they communicate. You can only have one million satellites orbiting the Earth if it is a monopoly.”
Starlink will also want to upgrade their orbiting data centres with the latest technology. According to a group astronomers that filed an objection against SpaceX’s FCC application, replacing a million satellites every five years could result in even more orbital activity. It would also increase the amount of debris entering Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists are worried that debris reentering the atmosphere could harm Earth’s thermal equilibrium and damage its ozone.
Launch and Assembly at a Low Cost
Return on Investment is better the longer the hardware remains in orbit. For orbital data centres to be economically viable, however, it will require companies to figure out a way to send the hardware into orbit at a low cost. SpaceX has placed its bets on the upcoming Starship rocket, which can carry six times more payload than Falcon 9, their current mainstay. Thales Alenia concluded in its study that, if Europe wanted to create their own orbital data center, they would need to have a powerful launcher.
Launch is just one part of the equation. Even a Mega-rocket will not fit a large orbital data centre.
The data center will have to be built in space. This will require robotic systems which are not yet available. Many companies have tested prototypes with Earth-based systems. However, they are far away from being used in the real world.
Durand believes that smaller data centers will become an important part of orbital infrastructure in the near future, as they can process images directly from Earth observing satellites without sending them back to Earth.
This would help companies that sell insights from space as these large data sets can be processed by ground stations.
Durand says, “With orbital data centres you can begin with smaller servers and then build larger data centers.” You can take advantage of modularity. Learn little by little to develop your industrial capability in space. “We have the necessary technology and there is a huge demand for data processing in space, so we should think about this.”
However, smaller facilities won’t be able to reduce the pressure that data centers on Earth are putting on water and power. Some critics believe that it could take years for this vision of the world to become a reality, if at all.