Tether-Based Orbital Data Centers Aim to Shift Heavy Computing Off Earth
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SpaceX has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to place up to one million small, solar-powered satellites in low-Earth orbit intended to run AI processing workloads, a proposal that promises to move some compute off-planet while raising major technical and regulatory questions. Independent research teams are simultaneously exploring alternate architectures—such as modular compute nodes mounted on long tethers—that aim to deliver high power and thermal capacity with fewer discrete spacecraft, underscoring a burgeoning range of approaches to orbital data centers.


