Lessons · Lesson 6 of 6
Data centers in space
Constant sunlight and no water bills, against radiation and heat with nowhere to go.
Why go to orbit?
Above the atmosphere the Sun shines brighter and, in the right orbit, almost all the time. There is no grid queue and no water to use.
Slide the altitude and the beta angle (how the orbit faces the Sun) to see when a satellite falls into the Earth’s shadow and runs on batteries.
The hard parts: heat and radiation
In a vacuum there is no air to blow over the chips, so heat must glow away from big panels called radiators. Hotter radiators shed heat much faster.
Space radiation slowly damages chips and flips bits in memory. Designers add shielding, error-correcting memory, and save the AI’s work often so a glitch costs minutes, not days.
Quick check
How does a data center in orbit get rid of its heat?
- Fans blow it away
- It radiates it from large panels
- It melts ice
Show the answer
It radiates it from large panels. With no air or water around, radiating heat as infrared light is the only way out.