In a Federal Communications Commission submission, SpaceX has requested permission to launch up to one million satellites to create an orbital data center.
Per the paperwork, first reported by PC Mag, SpaceX would use this constellation to deliver “unprecedented computing capacity to power advanced artificial intelligence models and the applications that rely on them”. The thinking is that a space-based data center is the most efficient way to meet the growing demand for AI computing power.
Not only can the satellites power themselves through solar arrays on board, but they can also keep cool while computing in the vacuum of space.
According to SpaceX, the plan is to deploy the constellation in multiple narrow orbital shells between 500 km and 2,000 km in altitude. Communication would be via optical links or lasers, and the system would use the existing Starlink network to beam information back to Earth.
Now, this request is massive, and the Federal Communications Commission is not known for rolling out the red carpet for grandiose ideas. In fact, the Commission has yet to approve the full second-generation Starlink constellation of 22,488 satellites and has approved only 7,500.
So, is this going to happen in the next year? No. But it is an interesting proposal, and one that is most likely going to be funded by the company’s planned initial public offering.
