Lumen Orbit wants to deploy data centers in space

Today’s data centers have a multitude of well-known issues: They gobble up massive amounts of energy and space, are costly, and struggle to meet the intense resource demands of next-gen artificial intelligence (AI).

But Nvidia and Y Combinator-backed Lumen Orbit has a novel, out-of-this-world idea: Launching data centers into space. The company — which just last week closed an oversubscribed seed round of more than $10 million — says this could greatly ease terrestrial energy constraints, allow for rapid deployment and scalability, and reduce operating expenses by 20X.

The company plans to launch its demonstrator satellite in May 2025, and says it will have 100X more powerful GPUs than have ever been operated in space.

“We are convinced that orbital data centers are feasible, economically viable, and necessary to realize the potential of AI, the most important technology of the 21st century, in a rapid and sustainable manner,” the company asserted in a whitepaper.

No ‘insurmountable obstacles’ to data centers in space

Research has found that multi-gigawatt (GW) clusters will be required as soon as 2027 to train large language models (LLMs). However, earth-based data centers do not scale well, or sustainably, to gigawatt sizes, Lumen Orbit pointed out in its whitepaper. Existing infrastructures typically reach 100 megawatts (MW), while some are aiming for 1GW.

Terrestrial solar farms in the US achieve a median capacity factor — that is, the amount of power they generate compared to their maximum potential output — of just 24%. Solar projects in temperate regions fare worse, typically generating under 10%.

Further, in the western world, new large-scale projects can take a decade or more to complete because of many requirements around permits, restrictions, rights of way, and environmental factors.

“The central problem that should concern the leaders of tech companies is our inability to build,” noted Josh Smith, energy policy lead at The Abundance Institute. “ A cleaner future will be possible only by speeding up.”

Looking to space, Lumen said it has developed a range of concept designs and hasn’t discovered any “insurmountable obstacles.”

“Orbital data centers unlock next-generation clusters of a scale not seen yet on Earth, with power generation well into the GW range,” the company noted. “Space-grade data centers will be attractive for organizations that train very large AI models that could vastly exceed in size AI models trained on terrestrial data centers.”

‘Orders of magnitude’ lower costs

Orbital data centers will run on “abundant solar energy without batteries,” Lumen Orbit pointed out, using 24/7 solar energy and passive cooling unhindered by day/night cycles or weather.

This enables “orders of magnitude lower marginal energy costs,” the company wrote. For instance, a single 40MW cluster operated for 10 years in space would cost $8.2 million ($5 million for launch; $2 million for the solar array; and $1.2 million for 1 kilogram of shielding per kilowatt of compute and $30 a kilogram launch cost).

A terrestrial system, on the other hand, would cost $167 million over a 10 year period, based on factors including hardware, cooling, water usage, and backup power supply. This represents a roughly 20X higher cost than that of an orbiting data center.

One big cost consideration, though, is the launching of these satellites. But Lumen Orbit points out that price tags are falling as new, reusable, cost-effective, heavy-lift launch vehicles emerge. “Combined with the proliferation of in-orbit networking, the timing for this opportunity is ideal,” the company noted.

Design considerations for data centers in space

The majority of an orbital data center’s surface area will be solar arrays with square dimensions of roughly 4 KM (3280.84 feet) by 4 KM, according to Lumen Orbit. These will be thin film cells that use silicon wafers and cooling loops. The company pointed out that it is also important that orbital data centers be modular, or have the ability to be independently docked and undocked, so each element can evolve as required.

It said other important design considerations include:

• Maintainability: Old parts should be easy to replace without impacting other, larger parts. Ultimately, the center should not need to be retired for at least 10 years.
• Minimization of moving parts, such as connectors, mechanical actuators, and latches. Guided by existing practices of terrestrial data centers, each container should ideally have a single universal port that combines power, networking and cooling.
• Incremental scalability: the ability to scale the number of containers, which helps to maintain profitability “from the very first container,” without the need for major capex jumps at any point.

“They can be scaled almost indefinitely without the physical or permitting constraints faced on earth,” Lumen wrote.

Clearly, orbit is an important consideration; factors such as space debris, radiation, aerodynamic drag, and network availability and latency must be taken into account. Most importantly, the data center must have constant illumination to allow for solar power generation. This requires a “low-Earth, dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit,” according to the company. The plane would remain roughly perpendicular to the sun year-round, with the spacecraft in “near-continuous solar illumination.”

It should be noted that Lumen Orbit isn’t the first company to propose data centers in space. Lonestar Data Holdings is looking to build data centers on the moon, and other players include Axiom Space, Kepler Space and Skyloom. NTT is also working with SKY Perfect JSAT to  develop a satellite networking system.

Of course, there are those working in the other direction, too: Microsoft has experimented with data centers below the ocean; Subsea Cloud and Beijing Highlander Digital Technology have also explored that possibility.