Scientists: The artificial intelligence race will move to space

Space will probably become part of the race of artificial intelligence created by various companies and countries. Experts from Northeastern University in Boston (USA) provided predictions about the further stages of development of artificial intelligence technology.

Will AI work from orbit?

Google, SpaceX and Blue Origin are currently developing technologies for artificial intelligence centers in space. However, it will probably take some years before such centers are actually built in Earth orbit. However, the first tests of this type may appear. Moreover, preliminary tests, on a small scale, are already being carried out.

The reason for moving large artificial intelligence centers into space will be energy issues and environmental impact. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the average artificial intelligence data center on Earth consumes as much electricity as 100,000 homes per year. This consumption will increase as artificial intelligence (AI) models become more complex.

It takes huge amounts of energy

In 2024, the agency reported that the energy requirements of data centers for artificial intelligence will double from 460 terawatt hours in 2022 to more than 1,000 terawatt hours in 2026, a value comparable to the energy consumption of a country such as Japan.

Data centers in space will be equipped with solar panels, will dissipate heat into space, and will not be limited by land availability issues.

Plans to build space data centers by SpaceX and Blue Origin were described in December by The Wall Street Journal. Blue Origin has a dedicated team for this task. SpaceX, in turn, is working to modify its rockets to make them better suited to deploying artificial intelligence computing units. Both companies have not publicly commented on these reports by the American newspaper. However, the CEOs of both companies, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, have talked in the past about building artificial intelligence data centers in space.

The test satellites will fly in 2027

In turn, in November, Google officially announced that as part of the Suncratcher project, it plans to launch two test satellites equipped with artificial intelligence chips in 2027.

The partner in this project will be the American satellite company Planet Labs.

Smaller companies are also working on the issue. For example, StarCloud, a startup supported by Nvidia, launched a satellite with an Nvidia H100 graphics processor a month ago. These processors run the Gemma open language model, developed by Google.

The main problem for the development of data centers in space may be the issue of energy supply. The sun is a very good source, but generating a sufficiently large amount of energy using solar panels will require either huge structures stretching for kilometers or a constellation of smaller ones, numbering in the tens of thousands of panels. Chips that support AI operation will also need to be protected from harmful radiation. Dissipating heat in space is also not a simple technological task.

Anncy Thresher from Northeastern University, who specializes in space policy, points out that building artificial intelligence centers in space (which will probably slightly reduce the need to build such centers on Earth in large numbers) may help reduce the negative impact of such facilities on the environment and inhabitants (e.g. in the so-called Data Center Alley in Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, USA, there is the largest data center hub in the United States, covering 250 facilities), but the very process of building them in space will have a negative impact on the environment by increasing the number of rocket launches. (PAP)

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