- The competition to deploy AI data centers beyond orbit has officially begun, with China assessed to be leading in deployment speed and technological framework.
- Scientist Han Yinhe from the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed that China is developing a “space supercomputer” in low orbit, integrating 10,000 high-performance computing cards.
- The US is accelerating massively with superior capital and launch capabilities; Elon Musk proposed launching 1 million tons of satellites annually, providing 100 gigawatts of AI computing capacity in orbit per year.
- SpaceX confirmed plans to build orbital data centers by expanding Starlink V3, while Google aims to deploy space data centers as early as 2027 with Project Suncatcher.
- Space-based AI centers offer strategic advantages: nearly infinite solar energy, natural heat dissipation, low latency, and reduced dependence on ground infrastructure, paving the way for 6G and military applications.
- US company Starcloud launched the Starcloud-1 satellite carrying Nvidia H100 GPUs into orbit to test remote sensing image processing and LLMs directly in space.
- China has been ahead since 2022 with space computers using domestic chips, operating stably for over 1,000 days; achieving in-orbit AI inference the following year.
- In May, China deployed a 12-satellite constellation with a power of 5 peta operations per second, integrating an 8-billion parameter AI model and proving commercial application in September, reducing data transmission bandwidth to the ground by over 90%.
- Beijing also announced plans to build a space data center cluster with a capacity of over 1GW in the 700–800 km orbit, aiming to complete a megawatt scale by 2035.
- Major challenges include radiation, extreme temperatures, launch vibrations, and high costs; China is researching new architectures, liquid cooling, and system innovations to compensate for the lack of advanced chips.
📌 The race for space-based AI data centers is becoming a new technological front between China and the US, tied tightly to national security, economic dominance, and the future of global connectivity. China currently leads in actual deployment with a 5-peta-operations constellation and over 1,000 days of operation, while the US counterattacks with massive capital and a vision of 100 gigawatts of AI in orbit.
