Google reportedly considering working with SpaceX on orbital data centers

Google is in negotiations with SpaceX to get the company’s help in its own efforts to install orbital data centers in space, reports The Wall Street Journal. If the two sides reach an agreement, it would see two competitors working together.

Project Suncatcher, the lunar project announced by Google to explore the feasibility of space data centers, actually predates SpaceX’s own foray. Google shared news of Suncatcher last November, while Elon Musk announced that SpaceX and xAI were merging – with plans to launch 1 million orbital data satellites – last February. According to the NewspaperGoogle is also in discussions with other rocket launch companies. The research giant is already working with Planet Labs to design and build the satellites it plans to launch into space.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk have both touted orbital data centers as an inevitability. “There’s no doubt in my mind that in a decade or so we’ll look at this as a more normal way of building data centers,” Pichai said. Fox News in an interview in November. Musk, in his announcement of the SpaceX and xAI merger, said that within three years, satellites would be the cheapest way to generate AI computing power.

However, experts Woozad spoke with in February expressed doubts about whether AI inference in space could be achieved at scale. Satellite GPUs would be subject to constant cosmic radiation that would affect their ability to perform error-free calculations, and it is difficult to cool them in the near vacuum of space, where the only way to dissipate heat is to slowly radiate it. On top of all this, placing millions of satellites in low Earth orbit will most likely have extremely detrimental effects on the planet’s atmosphere and the ability of other companies and governments to fly spacecraft safely.