WASHINGTON \u2014 An orbital data center startup is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for a constellation of as many as 88,000 satellites.<\/p>\n
The FCC accepted for filing March 13 an application by Starcloud<\/a>, a company based in Redmond, Washington, to operate as many as 88,000 satellites in a range of low Earth orbits to serve as orbital data centers for artificial intelligence and other applications.<\/p>\n \u201cStarcloud is designing its satellite system to accommodate the explosive growth of datacenter demands driven by AI, which is already encountering severe roadblocks to efforts to scale on the ground,\u201d the company wrote in its filing. \u201cBy avoiding the constraints of terrestrial deployment, space datacenters will be the most cost-effective and scalable way to deliver compute this decade.\u201d<\/p>\n The filing provides few details about the satellites themselves, such as their size and mass. The satellites will operate in \u201ca select set of narrow orbital shells\u201d up to 50 kilometers thick at altitudes between 600 and 850 kilometers. Those satellites will be in dusk-dawn sun-synchronous orbits to enable \u201cnear-continuous power generation\u201d from the sun.<\/p>\n A constellation of 88,000 satellites would be far larger than anything in service today. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink, the largest constellation, has about 10,000 satellites in orbit. However, the Starcloud proposal is far smaller than SpaceX\u2019s proposal, filed with the FCC at the end of January, to develop a constellation of up to one million orbital data center satellites<\/a>.<\/p>\n Like the SpaceX system, the Starcloud constellation would rely on optical intersatellite data links with broadband systems such as Starlink, Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper and Blue Origin\u2019s Tera Wave for most communications. The FCC filing seeks authorization for some Ka-band spectrum for telemetry, tracking and control communications with the Starcloud satellites. Those communications, the company said, would be conducted on a non-interference basis.<\/p>\n While Starcloud did not disclose details about the satellites, it said it \u201ctakes seriously the safe and sustainable use of these soon-to-be highly utilized orbits.\u201d The company said it would follow many best practices for safe satellite operations, including coordination with other operators and deploying satellites in lower orbits for initial checkouts before raising them to their operational altitudes, ensuring that a malfunctioning satellite quickly reenters.<\/p>\n The company added that its satellites are \u201cdesigned for full demisability,\u201d meaning they would burn up entirely on reentry with no debris reaching the ground.<\/p>\n \u201cStarcloud will also work closely with the astronomy community to protect essential observations, including implementing established brightness mitigation measures,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n Starcloud, previously known as Lumen Orbit, has deployed one small satellite to date. Starcloud-1 was placed in orbit in November on a SpaceX rideshare mission<\/a>. The 60-kilogram satellite is the first to run an Nvidia H100 processor in orbit, which it used to run a version of Google\u2019s Gemini AI model.<\/p>\n The company says on its website it is pursuing its first commercial spacecraft, Starcloud-2, scheduled to launch in 2027 into sun-synchronous orbit. The spacecraft will feature a cluster of processors and \u201cproprietary thermal and power systems in a smallsat form factor.\u201d<\/p>\n