The fast enlargement of synthetic intelligence and cloud products and services has led to an enormous call for for computing energy. The surge has strained knowledge infrastructure, which calls for a number of electrical energy to perform. A unmarried, medium-sized knowledge heart right here on Earth can eat sufficient electrical energy to energy about 16,500 properties, with even greater amenities the use of up to a small town.
Over the last few years, tech leaders have increasingly more advocated for space-based AI infrastructure to be able to cope with the facility necessities of knowledge facilities.
In area, sunshine – which sun panels can convert into electrical energy – is considerable and dependable. On Nov. 4, 2025, Google unveiled Undertaking Suncatcher, a daring proposal to release an 81-satellite constellation into low Earth orbit. It plans to make use of the constellation to reap daylight to energy the following technology of AI knowledge facilities in area. So, as a substitute of beaming energy again to Earth, the constellation would beam knowledge again to Earth.
As an example, in case you requested a chatbot find out how to bake sourdough bread, as a substitute of firing up an information heart in Virginia to craft a reaction, your question can be beamed as much as the constellation in area, processed by means of chips working purely on solar power, and the recipe despatched back off in your instrument. Doing so would imply leaving the considerable warmth generated in the back of within the chilly vacuum of area.
As a era entrepreneur, I applaud Google’s formidable plan. However as an area scientist, I expect that the corporate will quickly must reckon with a rising downside: area particles.
The math of crisis
Area particles – the number of defunct human-made items in Earth’s orbit – is already affecting area businesses, corporations and astronauts. This particles comprises huge items, comparable to spent rocket levels and lifeless satellites, in addition to tiny flecks of paint and different fragments from discontinued satellites.
Area particles travels at hypersonic speeds of roughly 17,500 miles in line with hour (28,000 km/h) in low Earth orbit. At this pace, colliding with a work of particles the dimensions of a blueberry would really feel like being hit by means of a falling anvil.
Satellite tv for pc breakups and anti-satellite exams have created an alarming quantity of particles, a disaster now exacerbated by means of the fast enlargement of industrial constellations comparable to SpaceX’s Starlink. The Starlink community has greater than 7,500 satellites, which give international high-speed web.
The U.S. Area Power actively tracks over 40,000 items greater than a softball the use of ground-based radar and optical telescopes. Then again, this quantity represents not up to 1% of the deadly items in orbit. The bulk are too small for those telescopes to reliably establish and monitor.
In November 2025, 3 Chinese language astronauts aboard the Tiangong area station had been compelled to lengthen their go back to Earth as a result of their pill were struck by means of a work of area particles. Again in 2018, a equivalent incident at the Global Area Station challenged members of the family between the US and Russia, as Russian media speculated {that a} NASA astronaut can have intentionally sabotaged the station.
The outlet discovered within the Soyuz pill.
NASA/EPA, by way of Shutterstock
The orbital shell Google’s mission goals – a Solar-synchronous orbit roughly 400 miles (650 kilometers) above Earth – is a main location for uninterrupted solar power. At this orbit, the spacecraft’s sun arrays will at all times be in direct sunshine, the place they may be able to generate electrical energy to energy the onboard AI payload. However because of this, Solar-synchronous orbit may be the only maximum congested freeway in low Earth orbit, and items on this orbit are the perhaps to collide with different satellites or particles.
As new items arrive and present items destroy aside, low Earth orbit may just method Kessler syndrome. On this principle, as soon as the choice of items in low Earth orbit exceeds a vital threshold, collisions between items generate a cascade of latest particles. In the end, this cascade of collisions may just render sure orbits completely unusable.
Implications for Undertaking Suncatcher
Undertaking Suncatcher proposes a cluster of satellites sporting huge sun panels. They’d fly with a radius of only one kilometer, every node spaced not up to 200 meters aside. To position that during standpoint, believe a racetrack kind of the dimensions of the Daytona Global Speedway, the place 81 automobiles race at 17,500 miles in line with hour – whilst separated by means of gaps concerning the distance you want to soundly brake at the freeway.
Even tiny items of area particles could have catastrophic results. This symbol displays the results of a lab-test affect between a block of aluminum and a small aluminum sphere touring at 4.2 miles (6.8 kilometers) in line with 2d.
Eu Area Company
This ultradense formation is essential for the satellites to transmit knowledge to one another. The constellation splits advanced AI workloads throughout all its 81 gadgets, enabling them to “think” and procedure knowledge concurrently as a unmarried, huge, allotted mind. Google is partnering with an area corporate to release two prototype satellites by means of early 2027 to validate the {hardware}.
However within the vacuum of area, flying in formation is a continuing combat towards physics. Whilst the ambience in low Earth orbit is extremely skinny, it’s not empty. Sparse air debris create orbital drag on satellites – this drive pushes towards the spacecraft, slowing it down and forcing it to drop in altitude. Satellites with huge floor spaces have extra problems with drag, as they may be able to act like a sail catching the wind.
So as to add to this complexity, streams of debris and magnetic fields from the Solar – referred to as area climate – could cause the density of air debris in low Earth orbit to vary in unpredictable tactics. Those fluctuations at once have an effect on orbital drag.
When satellites are spaced not up to 200 meters aside, the margin for error evaporates. A unmarried affect may just no longer handiest ruin one satellite tv for pc however ship it blasting into its neighbors, triggering a cascade that would wipe out all the cluster and randomly scatter hundreds of thousands of latest items of particles into an orbit this is already a minefield.
The significance of energetic avoidance
To forestall crashes and cascades, satellite tv for pc corporations may just undertake a depart no hint same old, which means that designing satellites that don’t fragment, unencumber particles or endanger their neighbors, and that may be safely got rid of from orbit. For a constellation as dense and complicated as Suncatcher, assembly this same old would possibly require equipping the satellites with “reflexes” that autonomously stumble on and dance thru a particles box. Suncatcher’s present design doesn’t come with those energetic avoidance functions.
Within the first six months of 2025 by myself, SpaceX’s Starlink constellation carried out a staggering 144,404 collision-avoidance maneuvers to dodge particles and different spacecraft. In a similar fashion, Suncatcher would most probably stumble upon particles greater than a grain of sand each and every 5 seconds.
Lately’s object-tracking infrastructure is in most cases restricted to clutter greater than a softball, leaving hundreds of thousands of smaller particles items successfully invisible to satellite tv for pc operators. Long run constellations will want an onboard detection machine that may actively spot those smaller threats and maneuver the satellite tv for pc autonomously in actual time.
Equipping Suncatcher with energetic collision avoidance functions can be an engineering feat. As a result of the tight spacing, the constellation would wish to reply as a unmarried entity. Satellites would wish to reposition in live performance, very similar to a synchronized flock of birds. Each and every satellite tv for pc would wish to react to the slightest shift of its neighbor.
Detecting area particles in orbit can assist save you collisions.
Paying hire for the orbit
Technological answers, then again, can move handiest thus far. In September 2022, the Federal Communications Fee created a rule requiring satellite tv for pc operators to take away their spacecraft from orbit inside of 5 years of the undertaking’s finishing touch. This most often comes to a managed de-orbit maneuver. Operators should now reserve sufficient gas to fireside the thrusters on the finish of the undertaking to decrease the satellite tv for pc’s altitude, till atmospheric drag takes over and the spacecraft burns up within the environment.
Then again, the guideline does no longer cope with the particles already in area, nor any long run particles, from injuries or mishaps. To take on those problems, some policymakers have proposed a use-tax for area particles removing.
A use-tax or orbital-use price would price satellite tv for pc operators a levy in response to the orbital rigidity their constellation imposes, similar to greater or heavier cars paying larger charges to make use of public roads. Those budget would finance energetic particles removing missions, which seize and take away essentially the most unhealthy items of junk.
Keeping off collisions is a short lived technical repair, no longer a long-term method to the gap particles downside. As some corporations glance to area as a brand new house for knowledge facilities, and others proceed to ship satellite tv for pc constellations into orbit, new insurance policies and energetic particles removing techniques can assist stay low Earth orbit open for industry.
