The fast growth of synthetic intelligence and cloud companies has led to an enormous demand for computing energy. The surge has strained knowledge infrastructure, which requires a lot of electrical energy to function. A single, medium-sized knowledge middle right here on Earth can devour sufficient electrical energy to energy about 16,500 houses, with even bigger services utilizing as a lot as a small metropolis.
Over the previous few years, tech leaders have more and more advocated for space-based AI infrastructure as a solution to handle the facility necessities of information facilities.
In house, sunshine – which photo voltaic panels can convert into electrical energy – is plentiful and dependable. On Nov. 4, 2025, Google unveiled Challenge Suncatcher, a daring proposal to launch an 81-satellite constellation into low Earth orbit. It plans to make use of the constellation to reap daylight to energy the following technology of AI knowledge facilities in house. So, as an alternative of beaming energy again to Earth, the constellation would beam knowledge again to Earth.
For instance, if you happen to requested a chatbot find out how to bake sourdough bread, as an alternative of firing up a knowledge middle in Virginia to craft a response, your question can be beamed as much as the constellation in house, processed by chips operating purely on photo voltaic vitality, and the recipe despatched again right down to your machine. Doing so would imply leaving the substantial warmth generated behind within the chilly vacuum of house.
As a expertise entrepreneur, I applaud Google’s formidable plan. However as an area scientist, I predict that the corporate will quickly need to reckon with a rising downside: house particles.
The arithmetic of catastrophe
House particles – the gathering of defunct human-made objects in Earth’s orbit – is already affecting house companies, corporations and astronauts. This particles consists of massive items, comparable to spent rocket levels and lifeless satellites, in addition to tiny flecks of paint and different fragments from discontinued satellites.
House particles travels at hypersonic speeds of roughly 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/h) in low Earth orbit. At this pace, colliding with a chunk of particles the scale of a blueberry would really feel like being hit by a falling anvil.
Satellite tv for pc breakups and anti-satellite assessments have created an alarming quantity of particles, a disaster now exacerbated by the fast growth of economic constellations comparable to SpaceX’s Starlink. The Starlink community has greater than 7,500 satellites, which offer international high-speed web.
The U.S. House Pressure actively tracks over 40,000 objects bigger than a softball utilizing ground-based radar and optical telescopes. Nevertheless, this quantity represents lower than 1% of the deadly objects in orbit. The bulk are too small for these telescopes to reliably establish and observe.
In November 2025, three Chinese language astronauts aboard the Tiangong house station have been compelled to delay their return to Earth as a result of their capsule had been struck by a chunk of house particles. Again in 2018, the same incident on the Worldwide House Station challenged relations between the USA and Russia, as Russian media speculated {that a} NASA astronaut could have intentionally sabotaged the station.
The orbital shell Google’s undertaking targets – a Solar-synchronous orbit roughly 400 miles (650 kilometers) above Earth – is a first-rate location for uninterrupted photo voltaic vitality. At this orbit, the spacecraft’s photo voltaic arrays will at all times be in direct sunshine, the place they will generate electrical energy to energy the onboard AI payload. However because of this, Solar-synchronous orbit can also be the single most congested freeway in low Earth orbit, and objects on this orbit are the more than likely to collide with different satellites or particles.
As new objects arrive and current objects break aside, low Earth orbit might strategy Kessler syndrome. On this concept, as soon as the variety of objects in low Earth orbit exceeds a important threshold, collisions between objects generate a cascade of latest particles. Ultimately, this cascade of collisions might render sure orbits solely unusable.
Implications for Challenge Suncatcher
Challenge Suncatcher proposes a cluster of satellites carrying massive photo voltaic panels. They might fly with a radius of only one kilometer, every node spaced lower than 200 meters aside. To place that in perspective, think about a racetrack roughly the scale of the Daytona Worldwide Speedway, the place 81 automobiles race at 17,500 miles per hour – whereas separated by gaps concerning the distance you want to safely brake on the freeway.
This ultradense formation is critical for the satellites to transmit knowledge to one another. The constellation splits advanced AI workloads throughout all its 81 items, enabling them to “suppose” and course of knowledge concurrently as a single, huge, distributed mind. Google is partnering with an area firm to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 to validate the {hardware}.
However within the vacuum of house, flying in formation is a continuing battle towards physics. Whereas the environment in low Earth orbit is extremely skinny, it’s not empty. Sparse air particles create orbital drag on satellites – this power pushes towards the spacecraft, slowing it down and forcing it to drop in altitude. Satellites with massive floor areas have extra points with drag, as they will act like a sail catching the wind.
So as to add to this complexity, streams of particles and magnetic fields from the Solar – generally known as house climate – may cause the density of air particles in low Earth orbit to fluctuate in unpredictable methods. These fluctuations instantly have an effect on orbital drag.
When satellites are spaced lower than 200 meters aside, the margin for error evaporates. A single influence couldn’t solely destroy one satellite tv for pc however ship it blasting into its neighbors, triggering a cascade that might wipe out all the cluster and randomly scatter tens of millions of latest items of particles into an orbit that’s already a minefield.
The significance of lively avoidance
To forestall crashes and cascades, satellite tv for pc corporations might undertake a depart no hint customary, which suggests designing satellites that don’t fragment, launch particles or endanger their neighbors, and that may be safely faraway from orbit. For a constellation as dense and complex as Suncatcher, assembly this customary would possibly require equipping the satellites with “reflexes” that autonomously detect and dance by a particles area. Suncatcher’s present design doesn’t embody these lively avoidance capabilities.
Within the first six months of 2025 alone, SpaceX’s Starlink constellation carried out a staggering 144,404 collision-avoidance maneuvers to dodge particles and different spacecraft. Equally, Suncatcher would doubtless encounter particles bigger than a grain of sand each 5 seconds.
Right this moment’s object-tracking infrastructure is usually restricted to mess bigger than a softball, leaving tens of millions of smaller particles items successfully invisible to satellite tv for pc operators. Future constellations will want an onboard detection system that may actively spot these smaller threats and maneuver the satellite tv for pc autonomously in actual time.
Equipping Suncatcher with lively collision avoidance capabilities can be an engineering feat. Due to the tight spacing, the constellation would wish to reply as a single entity. Satellites would wish to reposition in live performance, just like a synchronized flock of birds. Every satellite tv for pc would wish to react to the slightest shift of its neighbor.
Paying lease for the orbit
Technological options, nevertheless, can go solely thus far. In September 2022, the Federal Communications Fee created a rule requiring satellite tv for pc operators to take away their spacecraft from orbit inside 5 years of the mission’s completion. This usually includes a managed de-orbit maneuver. Operators should now reserve sufficient gas to fireplace the thrusters on the finish of the mission to decrease the satellite tv for pc’s altitude, till atmospheric drag takes over and the spacecraft burns up within the environment.
Nevertheless, the rule doesn’t handle the particles already in house, nor any future particles, from accidents or mishaps. To deal with these points, some policymakers have proposed a use-tax for house particles elimination.
A use-tax or orbital-use price would cost satellite tv for pc operators a levy primarily based on the orbital stress their constellation imposes, very like bigger or heavier automobiles paying larger charges to make use of public roads. These funds would finance lively particles elimination missions, which seize and take away probably the most harmful items of junk.
Avoiding collisions is a short lived technical repair, not a long-term resolution to the house particles downside. As some corporations look to house as a brand new house for knowledge facilities, and others proceed to ship satellite tv for pc constellations into orbit, new insurance policies and lively particles elimination packages will help preserve low Earth orbit open for enterprise.
Mojtaba Akhavan-Tafti, Affiliate Analysis Scientist, College of Michigan
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