Feature
Having trouble finding a spot for your data center? Or enough electricity to power and cool it?
Look up.
Axiom Space, based in Houston, announced in April that it intended to launch its first two Orbital Data Center (ODC) nodes to low-Earth orbit (LEO) by the end of this year. Lonestar Data Holdings, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Starcloud, based in Redmond, Washington, have also taken steps in this area.
“20 years from now, plus or minus 10, we are looking at ODCs in the gigawatt class, not like a Starlink, but purpose for compute, offsetting significantly the terrestrial energy cooling and real estate demands that cloud and AI continue to have,” Jason Aspiotis, global director, in-space data & security, for Axiom Space, said at the UK Space Conference held in Manchester in July.
The Edge Computing Advantage of Orbital Data Centers (ODCs)
“It's going to take a few decades to get there, but the vision we have is gigawatts of ODCs in Earth's orbits and beyond, and ODCs being the primary processing and storage infrastructure for our civilization.
- Jason Aspiotis
Global Director, In-Space Data & Security, Axiom Space
While ODCs are called data centers, they’re really typically more used like edge servers, in that their primary function is to process data acquired in space through sources such as satellites — a function that has both military and commercial applications.
“The reality is that our future space use will be a mixture of military and commercial,” said Lt. Gen. Susan Coyle, chief of Australia’s Space and Cyber, Joint Capabilities Group, at the 2025 Global Air & Space Chiefs’ Conference in London.
Currently, data acquired by a satellite gets transmitted to the ground, where it’s analyzed. If the satellite is going to do something with the analyzed data, then the results need to be transmitted back up to the satellite. The whole process introduces a lot of latency, which can be a problem, particularly for military applications. ODCs are intended to solve that problem.
“[An Orbital Data Cener is] purpose-built to facilitate as much compute storage as possible,” Aspiotis said. “It's not something that's insurmountable in terms of current technological capabilities to go build and deploy rapidly.”
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The Untapped Potential of Space-Borne Data
Axiom began working on ODCs four years ago in response to the proliferation of defense communication satellites, according to Aspiotis.
“There's a lot of data being moved, but the whole purpose of these networks is to move data back to the ground." Yet according to one space journey he follows, Aspiotis said, 90% of data in space goes unused because either it never makes it back to the ground, or by the time it does make it back to the ground, it's obsolete. “Data has a shelf life."
In particular, military applications such as Golden Dome, which is intended to find and destroy space threats, perhaps even before they launch, will require Orbital Data Centers to be able to process data in time for it to be useful.
ODCs are also more modular, which makes them more resilient, Aspiotis explained. In addition, because they are modular, they are more federated, which helps with data sovereignty issues, which are requirements about where data is or isn’t stored or processed based on the nationality of how it’s collected or whom it covers. “ODCs dictate more efficient use of supercomputing on the ground by bringing just down the insights vs. all the data."
Bypassing Earth’s Data Center Growing Pains
Processing data in orbit also reduces the need for data centers on the ground, where they need to be cooled, contend for power and even have trouble finding a place to be located, as residents in areas such as Virginia’s Loudon County — known as Data Center Alley — are pushing back against additional data center facilities.
ODCs use solar or battery power, and don’t need to worry as much about cooling because, well, they’re in space. Space is generally cold, though obviously the satellites need to be kept out of the rays of the sun. Axiom plans to place its ODCs in low earth orbit (LEO), which means from 100 to 1,200 miles above the surface, circling the earth every 90 minutes, according to a global satellite market forecast from Goldman Sachs.
Lonestar Data Holdings intends to place its Data Center at Earth Moon L1, one of five Lagrange points where gravity between the earth and the moon are at equilibrium, meaning it takes less energy to maintain orbit. The company, which sees its units more as a very remote backup, held tests earlier this year both in-orbit and on the surface of the moon itself.
But while space is big, the LEO area is getting increasingly congested as “constellations” of related satellites, like the Starlink network, increase. Congestion includes not only satellites still in orbit, but satellites that no longer work, as well as debris. What’s worse is that a single collision could cause multiple other collisions, like a successful “break” when playing pool. ODCs will need to find a way to defend against or avoid such collisions.
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Defending ODCs in an Era of Digital and Physical Warfare
Siting data centers in low-Earth orbit comes with additional problems. ODCs need to be launched into space, and the rockets that do that sometimes blow up.
SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, briefly takes flight then explodes in midair on first launch attempt https://t.co/7fPWwnLKE0 pic.twitter.com/2yZpePHMJJ
— CNN (@CNN) April 20, 2023
And some of the technology required to implement Orbital Data Centers isn’t finalized yet, said United States Space Force Lt. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton, deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements, at the London conference. But while there are still artificial intelligence (AI) and automation functions that need to be developed to implement ODCs, minimizing the data coming to the ground will make it more realistic to provide quality information to land and air forces.
The biggest problem, however, is that of security. ODCs typically won’t have onsite staff, which makes them more challenging to protect against cyberattacks. While ODCs may or may not have humans on-board, humans would definitely need to remain in the loop, Aspiotis said.
What’s worse could be actual physical attacks, especially for military Orbital Data Centers or ODCs with dual-use technology that serves both commercial and military purposes.
“You can use commercial civilian capabilities for military use,” said Maj. Gen. Philippe Adam, space commander of the French Air and Space Force, at the London panel. “Also, you can use military capabilities for civilian support,” such as after an earthquake or other disaster. “Infrastructure is for everybody, but it's also a target in times of war.”
Why Civilian Orbital Data Centers Aren’t Safe Either
And even for purely commercial ODCs, an enemy might not be too picky about what it attacks, Coyle told the London panel.
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“The adversary is not going to care,” Coyle said. “They're going to take whatever they want to have the greatest impact. They'll probably get more of an impact from a civilian organization, when the commercial capabilities go down, more than they would from the military, because we're not going to tell them ours have gone down, and the commercial will have the loss of those luxuries and access to space that they demand as civilian populations in our nations.”
Nonetheless, ODCs’ potential is there, Aspiotis said. “It's going to take a few decades to get there, but the vision we have is gigawatts of ODCs in Earth's orbits and beyond, and ODCs being the primary processing and storage infrastructure for our civilization. People have talked about killer apps in space for decades now. Obviously I'm biased, but I've been in this sector now for 20-plus years, and this is the killer app. There’s no doubt in my mind.”
