The environmental cost of putting data centers in space

When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year proposing to launch a million satellite data centers into orbit, the company argued the project would have no meaningful environmental impact. On SpaceX’s website, Elon Musk made the case for space-based AI infrastructure in simpler terms: “It’s always sunny in space,” he wrote, arguing that orbital data centers are “obviously the only way to scale.” When SpaceX filed an FCC application earlier this year to launch a million satellite data centers into space , the company said that the plan wouldn’t have any environmental impact. But researchers say the climate calculus is far more complicated than that. Yes, orbital data centers could theoretically run around the clock on solar power. But the tradeoffs extend far beyond electricity consumption. “The social and environmental consequences are far greater than what we’re currently looking at with Earth-based alternatives,” says Peter Howson, a researcher at Northumbria University who