With the soaring costs of operating artificial intelligence systems, the idea of moving some data centers to outer space is resurfacing, in order to take advantage of the constantly available solar energy and eliminate the need for land or electricity grids on Earth. This proposal has gained new momentum with the circulation of news about the potential IPO of SpaceX, which could provide huge funding for projects such as building data centers in space orbits.
The idea relies on placing computing and storage units inside satellites, which perform initial processing of data using artificial intelligence in space, instead of downloading the entire data to Earth, which saves time and reduces the need for large communication capacity, especially in applications such as Earth observation, disaster response, and military purposes.
However, this project faces numerous obstacles, the most important of which are: the difficulty of the cooling process in space, the high cost of launching and maintaining satellites, the increasing congestion in Earth orbit, in addition to concerns related to regulation and the environment. Therefore, despite its technical and investment appeal, this model remains a risky investment, and its use may remain limited, rather than becoming a comprehensive alternative to existing data centers on Earth.
