Threat level: “Businesses and policymakers should proceed with great caution,” top academic researchers warn in a report for the Innovation Forum for Cool Earth, an annual event organized by the Japanese government.
- If space data centers proliferate, “the most visible bright spots in the sky during much of the night in much of the world could be satellites, not stars,” the report said, reflecting astronomers’ concerns.
- If the US military adopts this technology, data centers could become potential targets in future space conflicts.
- Thousands of orbital data centers circling Earth at speeds of 17,000 miles per hour bring an “increasing risk of collisions” and dangerous space debris.
- Space data centers run on solar power, but the large number of rocket launches needed to put them into orbit generate greenhouse gases and black carbon emissions.
What they say: Columbia University’s David Sandalow, lead author of the report, told Axios that there are still “unknown unknowns” regarding the impacts of space data centers.
- “If this is going to happen, it needs to be done slowly and carefully,” Sandalow said. “It’s not enough to just throw a lot of these things out there and kind of see what happens. … There are big risks.”
In figures: Despite these concerns, Investors and technology innovators are all interested in space data centers.
- By 2025, about $197 million in investments were tied to orbital data centers, according to market research firm Quilty Space. That figure rose to $1.11 billion this year.
- SpaceX has applied for a constellation of 1 million data center satellites, according to the Secure World Foundation.
- Starcloud and Blue Origin’s Project Sunrise have ambitions for 88,000 and 51,600 satellites, respectively.
Yes, but: Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, said companies could request more satellites than they are likely to field. “They don’t want to have to increase that number later,” he said in an interview.
- “We’re at a point where people are counting paper records as if they’re substantial and real,” Henry said, “and we don’t know that yet.”
The bottom line: The researchers warned that governments and companies must wait until “the risks and impacts of space data centers are better understood and well managed” before putting them into orbit.
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