Google's first orbital data center is in orbit: fridge-sized, 1kW solar, two more planned next year
lemire · x · 2026-10-04
- Google's first orbital data center launched October 1st aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9: fridge-sized, 1kW of solar power (about a household's usage), expected to run for a year. Two more are planned next year, with laser communications on the roadmap.
- On latency: an orbital data center can stay in line of sight and relatively close (far nearer than the diameter of the USA); clusters can remain mutually visible. No gaming or HFT from space, but for compute, latency is unlikely to be the bottleneck.
- Why space: no five-year permit waits, no negotiating with local governments over electricity, and 24/7 solar power.
Related event: Google's First Orbital Data Center Reaches Orbit(2 posts)→
More from Infra
- Federated Learning: The Underrated Enterprise AI Pattern That Keeps Data Local — DavidLinthicum · 2026-10-04
- Nvidia Shield TV Pro, a 7-year-old streamer, gets $100 price hike due to AI memory demand — nordicinst · 2026-10-04
- RTX 4090 power connector melts after one month of AI generation loads — Roman53275 · 2026-10-04
- Fitting 120,000 NVIDIA B300 GPUs in Tour Montparnasse: a 304MW thought experiment — IgorCarron · 2026-10-04
- 3x RTX 3060 mining rig runs FlashNext at 38-40 t/s vs 13.2 t/s on llama.cpp — MD_Reptile · 2026-10-04
- PrAIvy: A P2P Network to Share Local Ollama Instances Across Users — Matty_za33 · 2026-10-04