The Sundarban 
A data center on the European Southern Observatory
(Image credit: ESO, CC BY 4.0)
This text turned into originally printed at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The hasty expansion of artificial intelligence and cloud services and products has resulted in a extensive demand for computing vitality. The surge has strained data infrastructure, which requires hundreds electricity to operate. A single, medium-sized data center here on Earth can spend adequate electricity to vitality about 16,500 houses, with even increased amenities using as worthy as a dinky city.
In space, sunshine – which photo voltaic panels can convert into electricity – is abundant and authentic. On Nov. 4, 2025, Google unveiled Undertaking Suncatcher, a mettlesome proposal to open an 81-satellite tv for laptop constellation into low Earth orbit. It plans to spend the constellation to harvest sunlight to vitality the following abilities of AI data centers in space. So, instead of beaming vitality lend a hand to Earth, the constellation would beam data lend a hand to Earth.
As an illustration, in the event you asked a chatbot how to bake sourdough bread, instead of firing up a data center in Virginia to craft a response, your quiz would possibly be beamed up to the constellation in space, processed by chips running purely on photo voltaic vitality, and the recipe sent lend a hand correct down to your tool. Doing so would mean leaving the substantial warmth generated behind in the frigid vacuum of space.
As a abilities entrepreneur, I applaud Google’s ambitious plan. But as a space scientist, I predict that the company will quickly want to reckon with a growing anxiety: space debris.
The arithmetic of wretchedness
Space debris – the collection of defunct human-made objects in Earth’s orbit – is already affecting space businesses, companies and astronauts. This debris includes good pieces, equivalent to spent rocket phases and ineffective satellites, in addition to tiny flecks of paint and other fragments from discontinued satellites.
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Space debris travels at hypersonic speeds of approximately 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/h) in low Earth orbit. At this trot, colliding with a chunk of debris the scale of a blueberry would feel fancy being hit by a falling anvil.
Satellite tv for laptop breakups and anti-satellite tv for laptop assessments luxuriate in created an alarming amount of debris, a crisis now exacerbated by the hasty expansion of economic constellations equivalent to SpaceX’s Starlink. The Starlink community has more than 7,500 satellites, which provide international excessive-trot internet.
The U.S. Space Force actively tracks over 40,000 objects increased than a softball using ground-based mostly completely radar and optical telescopes. On the opposite hand, this quantity represents less than 1% of the lethal objects in orbit. The bulk are too dinky for these telescopes to reliably title and music.
In November 2025, three Chinese astronauts aboard the Tiangong space space had been forced to prolong their return to Earth because their pill had been struck by a chunk of space debris. Lend a hand in 2018, a an identical incident on the International Space Location challenged kinfolk between the US and Russia, as Russian media speculated that a NASA astronaut would possibly additionally simply luxuriate in deliberately sabotaged the space.
The orbital shell Google’s mission targets – a Sun-synchronous orbit approximately 400 miles (650 kilometers) above Earth – is a main dwelling for uninterrupted photo voltaic vitality. At this orbit, the spacecraft’s photo voltaic arrays will consistently be in narrate sunshine, the put they can generate electricity to vitality the onboard AI payload. But for this cause, Sun-synchronous orbit is additionally the single most congested twin carriageway in low Earth orbit, and objects in this orbit are essentially the most most likely to collide with other satellites or debris.
As fresh objects attain and existing objects ruin apart, low Earth orbit would possibly method Kessler syndrome. In this understanding, as soon as the quantity of objects in low Earth orbit exceeds a significant threshold, collisions between objects generate a cascade of fresh debris. Finally, this cascade of collisions would possibly render certain orbits entirely unusable.
Implications for Undertaking Suncatcher
Undertaking Suncatcher proposes a cluster of satellites carrying good photo voltaic panels. They would hover with a radius of sincere one kilometer, each and every node spaced less than 200 meters apart. To position that in standpoint, imagine a racetrack roughly the scale of the Daytona International Speedway, the put 81 cars paddle at 17,500 miles per hour – while separated by gaps concerning the distance you might per chance perchance per chance want to safely brake on the twin carriageway.
This ultradense formation is serious for the satellites to transmit data to one another. The constellation splits advanced AI workloads true thru all its 81 fashions, enabling them to “think” and route of data simultaneously as a single, extensive, dispensed brain. Google is partnering with a space company to open two prototype satellites by early 2027 to validate the hardware.
But in the vacuum of space, flying in formation is a constant battle against physics. Whereas the atmosphere in low Earth orbit is incredibly thin, it is not empty. Sparse air particles blueprint orbital run on satellites – this power pushes against the spacecraft, slowing it down and forcing it to fall in altitude. Satellites with good surface areas luxuriate in more issues with run, as they can act fancy a waft catching the wind.
With the intention to add to this complexity, streams of particles and magnetic fields from the Sun – identified as space weather – can arena off the density of air particles in low Earth orbit to fluctuate in unpredictable systems. These fluctuations instantly affect orbital run.
