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Category: satellites

Why the economics of orbital AI are so brutal

He’s not alone. xAI’s head of compute has reportedly bet his counterpart at Anthropic that 1% of global compute will be in orbit by 2028. Google (which has a significant ownership stake in SpaceX) has announced a space AI effort called Project Suncatcher, which will launch prototype vehicles in 2027. Starcloud, a startup that has raised $34 million backed by Google and Andreessen Horowitz, filed its own plans for an 80,000 satellite constellation last week. Even Jeff Bezos has said this is the future.

But behind the hype, what will it actually take to get data centers into space?

In a first analysis, today’s terrestrial data centers remain cheaper than those in orbit. Andrew McCalip, a space engineer, has built a helpful calculator comparing the two models. His baseline results show that a 1 GW orbital data center might cost $42.4 billion — almost 3x its ground-bound equivalent, thanks to the up-front costs of building the satellites and launching them to orbit.

JUST RECORDED: Elon Musk Announces MAJOR Company Shakeup

Elon Musk Announces MAJOR Company Changes as XAI/SpaceX ## Elon Musk is announcing significant changes and advancements across his companies, primarily focused on developing and integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to drive innovation, productivity, and growth ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Product Development & Market Position.

🚀 Q: How fast did xAI achieve market leadership compared to competitors?

A: xAI reached number one in voice, image, video generation, and forecasting with the Grok 4.20 model in just 2.5 years, outpacing competitors who are 5–20 years old with larger teams and more resources.

📱 Q: What scale did xAI’s everything app reach in one year?

A: In one year, xAI went from nothing to 2M Teslas using Grok, deployed a Grok voice agent API, and built an everything app handling legal questions, slide decks, and puzzles.

Continue reading “JUST RECORDED: Elon Musk Announces MAJOR Company Shakeup” | >

SpaceX Starthink: Building Earth’s Planetary Neocortex with Orbital AI

In a bold fusion of SpaceX’s satellite expertise and Tesla’s AI prowess, the Starthink Synthetic Brain emerges as a revolutionary orbital data center.

Proposed in Digital Habitats February 2026 document, this next-gen satellite leverages the Starlink V3 platform to create a distributed synthetic intelligence wrapping the planet.

Following SpaceX’s FCC filing for up to one million orbital data centers and its acquisition of xAI, Starthink signals humanity’s leap toward a Kardashev II civilization.

As Elon Musk noted in February 2026, ]

“In 36 months, but probably closer to 30, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space.”

## The Biological Analogy.

Starthink draws from neuroscience: * Neural Cluster: A single Tesla AI5 chip, processing AI inference at ~250W, like a neuron group. * Synthetic Brain: One Starthink satellite, a 2.5-tonne self-contained node with 500 neural clusters, solar power, storage, and comms. * Planetary Neocortex: One million interconnected Brains forming a global mesh intelligence, linked by laser and microwave “synapses.”

Continue reading “SpaceX Starthink: Building Earth’s Planetary Neocortex with Orbital AI” | >

Satellite servicing startup Starfish taps Quindar for mission operations software

WASHINGTON — Quindar, a startup that provides mission management software for satellite operators, has been selected by satellite servicing company Starfish Space to support the first three missions of its Otter spacecraft.

Under an agreement announced Feb. 5, Quindar will provide software to manage and automate operations for Starfish’s initial Otter missions, which are expected to begin launching this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Based in Denver, Quindar offers a cloud-hosted platform that allows satellite operators to track spacecraft, send commands and automate routine ground operations. The company positions its software as an alternative to traditional, custom-built mission control systems that operators typically develop in-house and maintain over the life of a program.

Elon Musk — “In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”

How Elon plans to launch a terawatt of GPUs into space.

## Elon Musk plans to launch a massive computing power of 1 terawatt of GPUs into space to advance AI, robotics, and make humanity multi-planetary, while ensuring responsible use and production. ## ## Questions to inspire discussion.

Space-Based AI Infrastructure.

Q: When will space-based data centers become economically superior to Earth-based ones? A: Space data centers will be the most economically compelling option in 30–36 months due to 5x more effective solar power (no batteries needed) and regulatory advantages in scaling compared to Earth.

☀️ Q: How much cheaper is space solar compared to ground solar? A: Space solar is 10x cheaper than ground solar because it requires no batteries and is 5x more effective, while Earth scaling faces tariffs and land/permit issues.

Q: What solar production capacity are SpaceX and Tesla planning? A: SpaceX and Tesla plan to produce 100 GW/year of solar cells for space, manufacturing from raw materials to finished cells in-house.

Continue reading “Elon Musk — “In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space”” | >

Silicon as strategy: the hidden battleground of the new space race

In the consumer electronics playbook, custom silicon is the final step in the marathon: you use off-the-shelf components to prove a product, achieve mass scale and only then invest in proprietary chips to create differentiation, improve operations, and optimize margins.

In the modern satellite communications (SATCOM) ecosystem, this script has been flipped. For the industry’s frontrunners, custom silicon is the starting line where the bets are high, and the rewards are even higher, not a late-stage luxury. Building custom silicon is just a small piece of the big project when it comes to launching a satellite constellation and the fact there are very limited off the shelf options.

The shift toward custom silicon is no longer a theoretical debate; it is a proven competitive requirement. To monetize the massive capital expenditure of a constellation, market leaders are already driving aggressive custom silicon programs for beamformers and modems from the very beginning. The consensus is clear: while commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) served as useful stopgaps, they have become a strategic liability that compromises price and power efficiency. If the industry is to scale to the mass market, operators must commit to bespoke silicon programs now — or risk being permanently priced out of the sky by competitors who have already optimized their hardware for the unit economics of space.

Viridian inks cooperative agreement with Air Force Research Laboratory

SAN FRANCISCO — Viridian Space Corp. signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The five-year CRADA will provide the Southern California startup with access to testing facilities and satellite-operations expertise at AFRL’s Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

“There seems to be a good collaborative opportunity for testing our technology on the ground and, when we fly, collecting and sharing data from the [Very Low Earth Orbit] VLEO environment,” Viridian Space CEO Rostislav Spektor told SpaceNews. “Characterizing the VLEO environment is important for satellites that fly in VLEO and for satellites traveling to higher orbits that fly through VLEO.”

Simulations and supercomputing calculate one million orbits in cislunar space

Satellites and spacecraft in the vast region between the earth and moon and just beyond — called cislunar space — are crucial for space exploration, scientific advancement and national security. But figuring out where exactly to put them into a stable orbit can be a huge, computationally expensive challenge.

In an open-access database and with publicly available code, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have simulated and published one million orbits in cislunar space. The effort, enabled by supercomputing resources at the Laboratory, provides valuable data that can be used to plan missions, predict how small perturbations might change orbits and monitor space traffic.

To begin, the Space Situational Awareness Python package takes in a range of initial conditions for an orbit, like how elliptical and tilted the orbit is and how far it gets from the earth.

New 3D map of the sun’s magnetic interior could improve predictions of disruptive solar flares

For the first time, scientists have used satellite data to create a 3D map of the sun’s interior magnetic field, the fundamental driver of solar activity. The research, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, should enable more accurate predictions of solar cycles and space weather that affects satellites and power grids.

The sun is more than just a fiery hot ball of hydrogen and helium gas. It is a giant magnetic star. Beneath the surface is a magnetic layer that is responsible for everything from the dark spots we see on its face to violent flares that erupt into space. Because of the disruption caused by solar storms, we need to know what is going on inside. We can’t directly observe the interior, so to date we have relied on models that depend on simplified assumptions. But these can be inaccurate.

To get a better idea of what is going on inside the sun, researchers from India fed 30 years of daily magnetic maps from satellites (from 1996 to 2025) into a sophisticated 3D model of the solar dynamo, the physical process that generates the sun’s magnetic field. By using this real-world data, they could track how magnetic fields move deep beneath the surface, where satellites cannot penetrate.

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