These days there is a lot of interest in orbital data centers or data centers in space.
Data centers are needed to both store and process data. As we are incorporating more and more digital products into our lives, we need to store massive amounts of data. We also need to process the data to derive value. With the advent of Gen-AI, the need to store and process data has increased. The LLMs need to process massive amounts of data to become more effective as per The Bitter Lesson. As Gen-AI usage has grown, so has the investment in setting up newer data centers.
However, data centers are not always welcomed by local communities. Data centers never bring a lot of jobs with them. But data centers need electricity, stressing the power supply and power grid. Those need a lot of water as coolant. They also take up large areas. So there has been increased push back against data centers across the world.
Data centres in space is an innovative, though still controversial idea to address some of the issues.
Benefits of Orbital Data Centers
- Since the orbital data centers are not located on earth, they don’t put stress on local land, power and water supplies. So there is less opposition to their construction and deployment.
- Solar is a renewable energy. In space, it is available in abundance and there are no obstructions from the atmosphere.
- There is no need for water based cooling. Space is very cold.
- We can process data captured by satellites in space itself. So there is no need to transfer huge amounts of data back to earth.
Challenges of Orbital Data Centers
- A lot of resources need to be used to create and place data centers in space. Putting a data center in orbit is costly.
- There will be latency issues due to distance from the surface of earth to the orbits. Depending on the orbit, the latency can range from a few millisec in LEO to 600ms in GEO.
- Even though space is cold, there is no medium to transfer heat. The data center will have to radiate the heat out which is not easy.
- We need special chips which can operate in space and withstand radiation, extreme heat and vacuum. The data center will also need to operate safely in presence of orbital debris and other out of earth objects.
Current Players
SpaceX has been exploring orbital data center ideas. xAI, the subsidiary of SpaceX, is already leasing out data centers to other AI companies. SpaceX can deploy and provide space spaced data centers on lease to these companies.
Google is also working on orbital data center ideas as part of project Suncatcher. Google wants to deploy TPUs in space and use solar energy for processing.
Pixxel is teaming up with Sarvam AI to place an orbital data center satellite called ‘Pathfinder’ into orbit. It will carry data center grade GPU and full stack AI model. It will support both training and inference in the orbit. Pathfinder will demonstrate serving AI workflows from space.
Agnikul Cosmos is teaming up with NeevCloud to place orbital satellites in space. NeevCloud will use rockets provided by Agnikul Cosmos to deploy and refresh a constellation of satellites. It will follow a distributed cloud architecture spanning earth and satellites to offer low latency inference and resilient compute networks.
Conclusion
Orbital data centers are still in the exploration stage. There is a lot of interest. But there are also many challenges and feasibility issues to be ironed out.