Satellite startup Orbital has laid out plans to launch its first test mission in 2027, which they hope will provide a foundation for operating AI data centres in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The company’s first satellite, Orbital 1, is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in April next year. Its aim is to validate sustained GPU operation in orbit, test radiation hardening and eventually run AI workloads commercially.
Orbital noted it has secured funding from start-up accelerator a16z Speedrun to support the initial test and was in the process of making an application to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deploy a constellation supporting AI compute infrastructure.
The company is designing and manufacturing satellites housing a cluster of servers with Nvidia chips. It aims to power these using solar panels and cool them by radiating heat into space.
Orbital CEO and founder Euwyn Poon noted AI progress was “being constrained by the grid”, adding data centre “economics are dominated by electricity and cooling, and both are getting harder.”
“In orbit, solar power is continuous and cooling is fundamentally different. Orbital is building compute infrastructure that removes the energy ceiling and scales with AI’s potential”.
Poon believes “the energy ceiling on AI isn’t theoretical, it’s a real constraint that will impede the advancement of intelligence,” asserting a system in space “is the solution”.
The executive is far from the only advocate for space-based solutions to the AI power crunch, with a range of companies pursuing similar missions, including Elon Musk-owned SpaceX.
Alongside the test Orbital announced plans for an R&D facility in Los Angeles.
Source: Mobile World Live
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Source: Tahawul Tech