Orbital Data Centers Are Souped-Up Satellites – For Now


Key Takeaways: Today’s orbital data centers are better described as compute centers in space, as they resemble satellite constellations more than terrestrial data centers. The most common power solution is sun-synchronous solar at the poles, but this requires a multi-hop data relay from power-hungry compute to standard satellite constellations in the low-orbit mesh, then to Earth. ... » read more

Data Centers In Space?


The merger of xAI and SpaceX, the efforts by some startups, and research by Google have raised the question of when there will be data centers in space. The big advantage of space is the plentiful availability of solar energy, in a sun-synchronous orbit. Fig. 1: A possible orbital data center of the future. Source: Wikipedia, Creative Commons. SpaceX’s impressive Starlink uses s... » read more