WASHINGTON - SpaceX is gearing up to launch orbital data center spacecraft as soon as next year, and astronomers are already sharpening their complaints. In a June 12 interview on CNBC, SpaceX President Gwynn Shotwell confirmed the company expects to launch its first data center satellites in 2027, with earlier "canary sats" testing the waters on Starlink hardware.
The satellite, dubbed AI1, will be a majestic 70 meters long and 20 meters tall when unfurled, with solar arrays generating up to 150 kilowatts of peak power to support an average of 120 kilowatts of computing payload. "We like to look at this and say, what is the actual engineering problem here, and it's really a combination of delivering power and then taking the waste heat and energy away," said Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering at SpaceX, in a video posted June 8.
SpaceX argues the AI1 satellite will be easier to produce than Starlink satellites because it lacks complex phased-array antennas, instead using laser intersatellite links to Starlink. "Given the two, the easier one to design for is the AI satellite," said CEO Elon Musk in the video. "It's a lot of solar panels, radiator, and then everything else is pretty small by comparison."
The company plans to build the AI satellites in Bastrop, Texas, east of Austin, where it already makes Starlink terminals. Musk said construction of the solar array facility has started, with the AI satellite factory to follow soon. "We expect to have the AI sat production, the solar production and all of that operating at some reasonable volume by the end of next year," he said.
SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for up to 1 million satellites, though it's not alone - other companies have announced plans for tens of thousands of data center spacecraft. Astronomers, who have been dealing with Starlink's brightness since 2019, are not thrilled.
At a June 4 National Academies meeting, Tony Tyson, distinguished research professor at the University of California, Davis, noted that despite mitigation efforts, current V2 Mini Starlink satellites have a brightness of fifth magnitude - brighter than the recommended seventh magnitude limit for telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The upcoming V3 satellites will be even brighter. "SpaceX has set the standard for mitigation of satellite optical brightness," he said, which is a bit like setting the standard for politely ruining your view.
Orbital data centers will make the problem worse. The AI satellites will be launched into low parking orbits for checkout, where they are "extremely bright." The high launch rates will create "bright lanes" that will exist continuously in low Earth orbit. "At a million satellites, the sky brightness would be similar to the glare of a half-moon, which would preclude most of the science programs that our users want to do," Tyson warned. Even in higher orbits, the satellites can create glints as bright as Venus, interfering with time-domain astronomy that monitors supernovas and gamma-ray bursts.
Tyson said he saw little sign of technical or policy changes to mitigate the impact, though he offered his opinion that orbital data centers are a "failed business model" that cannot compete with terrestrial data centers using renewable energy. "There's going to be major impacts on optical astronomy from 2027 on," he said. "The next young generation of astronomers is going to have to deal with this."