When Elon Musk took SpaceX public in June, a big part of its value proposition came from promises of data centers in space. Skeptics were quick to list all of the hurdles. This afternoon Google’s Project Suncatcher is scheduled to launch hardware in pursuit of the same idea: it will send artificial intelligence processors into orbit onboard—of all things—a SpaceX rocket.
That doesn’t mean Musk’s pitch will become reality anytime soon. If anything, the gulf between Suncatcher and a working data center in orbit suggests how far off that future still is. But as AI’s appetite for electricity tests the patience of communities being asked to feed it, some of the richest tech companies are racing to source their energy needs from space instead.
The test satellite will carry just four processors, which will be used to run Google’s Gemini AI models for 15 minutes at a stretch before they need to shut down and cool off. The ultimate goal is to establish a full-fledged orbital data center, built from constellations of thousands of satellites that will share the work of running AI models and beam their responses back to Earth.
The whole effort has less to do with what could be accomplished out in space than with what’s getting harder to achieve down here on Earth. Data centers are projected to use around 3 percent of the world’s electricity by 2030, roughly double their share today, according to an International Energy Agency report. In orbit, sunlight is abundant and free, and Google says a solar panel there generates up to eight times as much power as it would on the ground. “We have direct access to a wonderful renewable source of energy,” says Alexander Wyglinski, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
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