Blue Origin, the space conglomerate founded by Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos, has asked the U.S. government for permission to launch a network of more than 50,000 satellites that will serve as data centers in orbit.
In a March 19 filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Blue Origin’s lawyers described Project Sunrise as a network of spacecraft that would perform advanced calculations in orbit to “relieve increasing pressure on America’s communities and natural resources by moving energy- and water-intensive calculations away from ground-based data centers.”
Blue Origin’s application doesn’t detail its satellite plans, so it’s difficult to know how much computing power the company aims to generate in space. Blue Origin also notes that it plans to use another constellation of satellites it aims to build, called TeraWave, as a high-throughput communications backbone for its data satellites.
Moving large-scale computing to space is attractive because solar energy is freely harvestable and there are fewer regulations restricting business activities once in orbit. The entrepreneurs behind these projects envision a future where AI tools are pervasive, and much of the inference work behind them will be outsourced to Orbit.
Several companies are already promoting this idea. SpaceX has applied for permission to launch 1 million satellites for use as distributed data centers, and startup Starcloud has proposed a network of 60,000 spacecraft to the FCC. Google is also developing a space data center concept called Project Suncatcher, and its partner Planet Labs plans to launch two demo spacecraft next year.
Although there is growing excitement in the technology world about space data centers, the economics of these projects remain challenging. The technology for cooling processors and communicating between spacecraft using powerful lasers needs to be developed and manufactured as cheaply as possible, but scientists are still determining how well advanced chips will perform at various tasks while exposed to the high radiation environment of space.
A key area is the cost of launching these computers into orbit, and with SpaceX’s Starship rocket still in development and the first launch potentially taking place next month in 2026, most are betting the cost of reaching orbit will drop.
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This may be an area where Blue Origin, which has been involved in the rocket business for many years, has an advantage. The company’s New Glenn rocket, which first flew last year, is one of the most powerful operational launch vehicles on Earth. If the company can fly and reuse at a regular pace, Blue Origin could reap similar benefits from the vertical integration that has allowed SpaceX to dominate space communications with its Starlink network.
Beyond the economic and technical challenges, the space environment itself can be an obstacle. Space in major orbits near Earth is becoming increasingly crowded, and as tens or hundreds of thousands of new satellites are added, concerns about orbital collisions will increase. On the other hand, burning out obsolete satellites in orbit, as is standard practice in the industry today, is likely to affect the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and researchers are concerned about negative effects on the ozone layer.
The application also didn’t provide any timing details, but experts told TechCrunch that such a project is unlikely to materialize until the 2030s.
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