The main orbital compute cluster is open for business

For all the data centers in the space, there aren’t many GPUs out there. As this begins to change, the long-term orbital computing business is beginning to form.

The largest computing cluster currently in operation was launched by Canada’s Kepler Communications in January, and has 40 Nvidia Orin processors on board 10 operational satellites, all connected by laser communication links.

The company now has 18 customers, and announced a new one on Monday – Sophia Space, a startup that will test its software. special orbital computer in the Kepler constellation.

Experts expect that we won’t see a space station as big as those envisioned by SpaceX or Blue Origin until the 2030s. The first step will be to process data collected in orbit to improve the capabilities of space-based sensors used by private companies and government agencies.

Kepler does not see itself as a data center company, but as an infrastructure for space applications, CEO Mina Mitry tells TechCrunch. It wants to be a layer that provides Internet services to other satellites in space, or to drones and space planes below.

Sophia, on the other hand, is developing a non-stationary space computer that can solve one of the problems serious problems for large data centers in orbit: keeping powerful processors from overheating without having to build and deploy heavy, expensive cooling systems.

In this new partnership, Sophia will deploy its operating system to one of the Kepler satellites and attempt to install and update six GPUs on two spacecraft. Such operations are common on the table in the world’s data centers, and this is the first time it has been tested in a round-robin fashion. Ensuring that the program is operational is a key step in de-risking Sophia ahead of the first satellite launch in late 2027.

For Kepler, this partnership helps ensure the use of its network. Currently, it is carrying and processing information that has been uploaded from the ground, or collected by payloads sent to its ship. But as the field expands, the company hopes to start connecting with third-party satellites to provide network and service improvements.

Mitry says the satellite industry is now planning a future economy around this model, pointing to the benefits of offloading power-hungry sensors, such as artificial radar. The US military is a key customer for such projects as it develops a new satellite-based defense system to detect and track threats. Kepler has already demonstrated the laser-space-air link in a US government demo.

This type of planning – dealing with data that is collected for quick response – is where orbital data centers will prove their worth. That vision sets Sophia and Kepler apart from established space companies like SpaceX and Blue Originor basics like Starcloud and Aetherflux which is raising more capital to focus on large data centers with data center processors.

“Because we believe it’s more important than training, we want many GPUs that are distributed, instead of one very powerful GPU that has the training task,” Mitry told TechCrunch. “If this thing is consuming a kilowatt of power and you’re only running 10% of the time, then it’s not very efficient. For us, our GPUs are running 100% of the time.”

And once these technologies are proven in practice, well, anything can happen. Sophia CEO Rob DeMillo points out that Wisconsin blocked construction of the data center last week, which some lawmakers in Congress are also pushing. Everything that hinders a data center on Earth is, in their eyes, what makes this place so attractive.

“There are no more data centers in the country,” Demillo said. “It’s going to be amazing from here.”