Musk has proposed SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft launching a data center satellite network with 100 gigawatts of combined capacity.
The Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud aims to build an individual 5-gigawatt orbital data center. The solar panels required to power a system at that scale would need to be 4 kilometers in width and length, according to Nvidia. Such massive panels will pose both a challenge to launch on modern rockets and to maintain in orbit: they would be difficult to control in space and vulnerable to collisions with space debris.
These satellites will also need another gargantuan element: radiators. Space is a vacuum, so the only option for cooling is to eject heat in the form of infrared radiation.
“You have to cool upwards into space, because the Earth itself is warm. …
Musk has proposed SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft launching a data center satellite network with 100 gigawatts of combined capacity.
The Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud aims to build an individual 5-gigawatt orbital data center. The solar panels required to power a system at that scale would need to be 4 kilometers in width and length, according to Nvidia. Such massive panels will pose both a challenge to launch on modern rockets and to maintain in orbit: they would be difficult to control in space and vulnerable to collisions with space debris.
These satellites will also need another gargantuan element: radiators. Space is a vacuum, so the only option for cooling is to eject heat in the form of infrared radiation.
“You have to cool upwards into space, because the Earth itself is warm. If you go far away from Earth, you can point opposite the Sun and cool down. If you’re in low-Earth orbit, Earth fills up half your sky.” That means satellites in low-Earth orbit — up to 2,000 kilometers — would have to keep their radiators pointed away from both the Earth and the Sun, which are usually in different directions. As the spacecraft circles the planet every 90 minutes, the radiators would need to constantly move to stay properly oriented.
Satellites in orbit experience a signal delay known as latency. With satellites in low-earth orbit, the signal delay is similar to the latency typical of ground networks. But in high orbits data centers would be likely to occupy, latency could be up to three seconds.
Metzger suggested that the satellites would need to be built in modules, so that future robotic satellites could rendezvous with broken data centers and swap out faulty pieces.
In November, Google announced Project Suncatcher, aimed at developing technology to move AI computing to space. In partnership with satellite company Planet, Google plans to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027.