Data centers have been a subject of controversy due to their extensive land occupation, high energy consumption, and substantial water usage. Tech giants in the US, such as “Nebula” and SpaceX, are now looking to the cosmos as the next frontier for data center construction, aiming to deploy them in orbit. In September 2024, the idea of “orbital data centers” captured widespread attention. By November 2025, “Nebula” had launched its inaugural satellite, equipped with NVIDIA H100 GPUs, effectively transforming the once-fictional notion of space-based data centers into a tangible reality.

Other industry leaders, including Google, SpaceX, and Blue Origin, have also unveiled their respective plans in this domain, with the US government rolling out initiatives to bolster their development. Nevertheless, space-based data centers are confronted with a multitude of challenges, encompassing heat dissipation, space radiation, space traffic management, and light pollution. Although certain companies have already dispatched AI models into orbit and regulatory agencies are showing a positive response, the road to commercialization is still fraught with obstacles. The industry predicts that it could take anywhere from 5 to 20 years for orbital data centers to evolve from a conceptual idea to a widely adopted technology.