Overview
- Fortune reports SpaceX has submitted FCC filings over the past three weeks outlining a vast orbital data-center constellation that could scale to as many as one million satellites.
- Elon Musk says he will combine xAI with SpaceX to pursue space-based AI computing, while a Yahoo Finance report describes the tie-up as an acquisition and suggests an IPO later this year, which has not been broadly confirmed.
- Experts cite fundamental hurdles including the need for enormous solar arrays (roughly one square kilometer per gigawatt), heat rejection in vacuum, large onboard batteries and a heavy-lift launch cadence that is still years from routine.
- Industry power constraints are intensifying, with data centers already using about 4% of U.S. electricity and forecasts showing that share more than doubling by 2030, as Eric Schmidt warns of a 92‑gigawatt shortfall.
- Early steps are emerging rather than scale: Google’s Project Suncatcher targets small orbital test racks by 2027, Lumen has flown a single Nvidia H100 in orbit, and City Journal notes Starlink’s ~8,000 satellites collectively host about 100 MW of solar-powered compute.