{"id":230816,"date":"2026-04-03T13:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T17:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/four-things-wed-need-to-put-data-centers-in-space\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T14:15:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T18:15:18","slug":"four-things-wed-need-to-put-data-centers-in-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/03\/four-things-wed-need-to-put-data-centers-in-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Four things we\u2019d need to put data centers in space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four things we\u2019d need to put data centers in space<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/04\/03\/1135073\/four-things-wed-need-to-put-data-centers-in-space\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-04-03 13:03:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.technologyreview.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Large structures with hundreds of square meters of solar arrays would quickly suffer damage from small pieces of space debris and meteorites, which would over time degrade the performance of their solar panels and create more debris in orbit. Operating one million satellites in low Earth orbit, the region of space at the altitude of up to 2,000 kilometers, might be impossible to do safely unless all satellites in that area are part of the same network so they can communicate effectively to maneuver around each other, Greg Vialle, the founder of the orbital recycling startup Lunexus Space, told MIT Technology Review.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can fit roughly four to five thousand satellites in one orbital shell,\u201d Vialle says. \u201cIf you count all the shells in low Earth orbit, you get to a number of around 240,000 satellites maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n

And spacecraft must be able to pass each other at a safe distance to avoid collisions, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou also need to be able to get stuff up to higher orbits and back down to de-orbit,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo you need to have gaps of at least 10 kilometers between the satellites to do that safely. Mega-constellations like Starlink can be packed more tightly because the satellites communicate with each other. But you can\u2019t have one million satellites around Earth unless it\u2019s a monopoly.\u201d<\/p>\n

On top of that, Starlink would likely want to regularly upgrade its orbiting data centers with more modern technology. Replacing a million satellites perhaps every five years would mean even more orbital traffic\u2014and it could increase the rate of debris reentry into Earth\u2019s atmosphere from around three or four pieces of junk a day to about one every three minutes, according to a group of astronomers who filed objections against SpaceX\u2019s FCC application. Some scientists are concerned that reentering debris could damage the ozone layer and alter Earth\u2019s thermal balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Economical launch and assembly<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The longer hardware survives in orbit, the better…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four things we\u2019d need to put data centers in space https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2026\/04\/03\/1135073\/four-things-wed-need-to-put-data-centers-in-space\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-03 13:03:00…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":230817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638.jpg?resize=1200,600","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[129,85],"class_list":["post-230816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-solar","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230818,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230816\/revisions\/230818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}