Google is reportedly considering working with SpaceX on orbital data centers

Source: Engadget

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Google’s Talks with SpaceX

Google is in negotiations with SpaceX to secure the company’s help for its nascent effort to put orbital data centers in space, according to The Wall Street Journal. If a deal is reached, two competitors would be working together on this ambitious project.

Project Suncatcher

Project Suncatcher, the moonshot Google announced to explore the feasibility of space‑based data centers, actually predates SpaceX’s own foray. Google shared news of Suncatcher last November, while Elon Musk announced that SpaceX and xAI were merging—with the intent of launching one million orbital data satellites—this past February.

According to the Journal, Google is also in discussions with other rocket‑launch companies. The search giant is already working with Planet Labs to design and build the satellites it plans to put into space.

Industry Perspectives

Both Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk have presented orbital data centers as an inevitability.

• Pichai told Fox News in a November interview: “There’s no doubt to me that a decade or so away, we’ll be viewing it as a more normal way to build data centers.”
• Musk, in his announcement of the SpaceX and xAI merger, said that within three years satellites would be the cheapest way to generate AI compute power.

Technical and Environmental Concerns

Experts Engadget spoke to in February expressed doubts about the feasibility of AI inference in space at scale:

• Radiation: GPUs in satellites would be subjected to constant cosmic radiation, potentially causing errors in calculations.
• Cooling: Dissipating heat in the near vacuum of space is difficult, as the only method is slow radiative cooling.
• Orbital Congestion: Deploying millions of satellites in low Earth orbit could have severe impacts on the planet’s atmosphere and jeopardize the safety of other spacecraft.

These challenges highlight the substantial technical and environmental hurdles that must be addressed before orbital data centers become a practical reality.