The race to build data centres in space is moving from science fiction towards an engineering experiment, driven by the enormous computing power needed to train and run artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The basic idea is straightforward: put computing hardware on satellites or large orbital platforms, connect them through high-speed communications networks and use the vacuum of space as an environment for cooling and solar energy as the power source.
Companies developing the concept argue that space could eventually offer advantages that are difficult to replicate on Earth, where data centres consume huge amounts of electricity and water and require increasingly large amounts of land and grid capacity.
Solar panels can generate electricity continuously for much of an orbital mission, while radiators can release waste heat directly into space, potentially reducing the need for the water-intensive cooling systems used by many terrestrial data centres.
The biggest obstacle, however, is getting the hardware into orbit and keeping it there.
Rocket launches remain expensive, although costs have fallen dramatically, while computing equipment must withstand radiation, extreme temperature changes and the physical stresses of launch, potentially requiring specialised hardware that is more expensive and less powerful than its Earth-based equivalent.
There is also the problem of maintenance. A failed server in a conventional data centre can be replaced within hours, whereas repairing or upgrading equipment hundreds of kilometres above Earth is considerably harder.
Moving data between space and Earth presents another challenge, particularly for AI applications that require enormous volumes of information to be transferred rapidly.
For those reasons, space-based computing is unlikely to replace conventional data centres soon, but that does not mean the concept will fail.
The most plausible early applications are specialised workloads, such as processing satellite imagery in orbit before transmitting results to Earth, rather than running massive consumer AI platforms entirely from space.
If launch costs continue falling and radiation-resistant chips, autonomous maintenance and optical communications improve, orbital data centres could eventually become economically viable for selected workloads.
The question is therefore less whether data centres can operate in space, and more whether the savings in energy, cooling and land can eventually outweigh the extraordinary cost and complexity of putting computing infrastructure into orbit.