SpaceX plans to launch one million satellites to power orbital AI data center

SpaceX plans to launch a million satellites to power an orbital AI data center

By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has filed plans with US regulators to launch up to a million satellites into low Earth orbit. Together, these satellites will act as an orbital data center to power artificial intelligence.

SpaceX currently operates between 9,300 and 9,600 of the approximately 14,000 active satellites orbiting Earth; These SpaceX satellites provide the company’s Starlink Internet service to millions of customers around the world. The scale of the new proposal is by far the largest of any planned satellite constellation. Including this filing, there are an estimated 1.7 million proposed satellites worldwide, according to a social media post from astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks satellite constellations through his blog.

“I think it will be extremely difficult to safely operate such a large number of satellites,” McDowell says. “This is an increase of a factor of 100 compared to the already large number existing today, therefore a factor of 10,000 in the number of close approaches in the absence of careful position maintenance.”

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SpaceX offers few details about the satellites, such as their size, their specific orbits or even their cost. But the company says it plans to place the satellites at “largely unused orbital altitudes” in an altitude range of 500 to 2,000 kilometers.

The spacecraft would be positioned to maximize time in the sun so it could run on solar power. This is a major argument in favor of orbital data centers, frequently cited by AI leaders, including Musk, who also owns xAI, the start-up behind the Grok chatbot. This construction could also strengthen SpaceX’s plan to go public later this year and potentially merge with xAI.

“Freed from the constraints of terrestrial deployment, within a few years, the lowest cost of generating AI computing will be in space,” SpaceX wrote in the filing. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite SpaceX’s optimism about the potential of AI, the proposal has raised concerns in the astronomy community. Peter Plavchan, an astronomy professor at George Mason University, wrote in a social media post that whoever can occupy most of the usable orbits around Earth first will effectively prevent any other company or nation from hosting satellites in those orbits. “This is the ultimate strategy of first-mover territorial claim in lieu of off-world space regulations,” Plavchan wrote.

Editor’s Note (2/2/26): This article was edited after publication to include comments from Jonathan McDowell and to correct descriptions of his social media post and the number of active satellites orbiting Earth.

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