Tech leaders have come to wonder if orbital data centers can help solve the industry's power crunch

Orbital data centers have become a fascination within the tech sector.

Technology bigwigs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Jensen Huang have mused about a future in which there are many data centers orbiting up in space. Now Google is making its first big leap toward realizing that vision.

A SpaceX (SPCX) Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch from California on Thursday afternoon, ferrying 130 customer payloads to orbit. Among them will be a prototype satellite designed by Planet Labs (PL) and equipped with tensor processing units, custom artificial-intelligence chips designed by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL).

It's the first major step toward making Google's Project Suncatcher a reality. Ultimately, the company wants to sprawling constellations of satellites in low-Earth orbit, or LEO, drawing on cheap and easily accessible solar energy to run and manage AI workloads.

Such constellations are often referred to as orbital data centers, which could be a "huge opportunity" for Google, according to ProcureAM CEO Andrew Chanin, whose company runs the Procure Space exchange-traded fund UFO.

Experts say data centers in space could, eventually, become cheaper to build and operate than traditional data centers. They could also allow companies to avoid some of the regulations and opposition that data centers currently face. Six in 10 Americans would be uncomfortable with a new data center opening in their neighborhood, according to Pew Research Center.

Google's satellite is expected to answer simple AI questions for about a year but continue circling the Earth for up to five more years. That could provide the company with valuable data and help it solve some of the challenges of operating orbital data centers.

Solar radiation and cosmic rays can create errors called bit flips that can alter the binary code of a circuit and lead to major problems. Additionally, space lacks an airflow, so the immense heat generated by TPUs and other chips warrants a "totally different approach" to cooling, according to Google.

"Can our TPUs survive and operate in space? Well, we're going to find out," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a statement.

Google won't be the first to put AI computing power in space. Starcloud, a startup recently valued at $2.3 billion, put a satellite carrying an Nvidia (NVDA) H100 chip in orbit last November. On Tuesday, Musk pointed to that mission as proof that orbital computing power can work.

Through SpaceX, startup Axiom Space in January also launched the first "nodes" it said would lay the foundation for orbital data centers. On that same mission, Kepler Communications also sent 10 satellites equipped with 40 Nvidia Orin edge processors to LEO.

Kepler said its platform will provide the infrastructure for space-based applications. A few other companies have similar goals in mind, such as Lonestar Data Holdings, which aims to provide space-based data storage using what it calls "StarVault" nodes.

"Ground data centers are threatened many different ways," Lonestar CEO Steve Eisele told MarketWatch, pointing to everything from natural disasters to cyberattacks. The company plans to begin commercial services in 2027, Eisele said.

Musk's SpaceX plans to launch its first AI satellite equipped with Nvidia chips by the last quarter of 2027 with the goal of putting up to one million in orbit. Bezos' Blue Origin has detailed a plan to send 51,600 data-center satellites to LEO, while Starcloud has asked regulators to approve a constellation of up to 88,000 satellites.

"In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale," Musk wrote in February. "By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will transform our ability to scale compute."

SpaceX, which counts Google as a major investor, is scheduled to carry out two additional missions on Thursday. It's set to proceed with a classified mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office and transport a team of astronauts to the International Space Station.

-William Gavin