Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Wants To Launch A 51,600-Satellite Data Center Into Orbit

Jeff Bezos’ space and rocket company is asking for federal approval to launch tens of thousands of satellites for an orbital data center, the latest billionaire-backed firm to try to push computing power into the skies. 

Blue Origin on Thursday submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission requesting permission to launch as many as 51,600 satellites into low Earth orbit to create a data center constellation dubbed Project Sunrise. 

The billionaire’s space venture is joining Google, xAI and other startups planning to push some of the infrastructure needed to power the mass adoption of artificial intelligence into space.

The nascent industry that may have seemed like science fiction a decade ago is quickly growing, with chipmaker Nvidia launching a space-focused business line this month.

Blue Origin’s proposal would put satellites of varying design into sun-synchronous orbits in groups of 300 to 1,000, between 300 and 1,100 miles above Earth. Those satellites would interface with Blue Origin’s previously proposed TeraWave constellation, which would put as many as 5,000 satellites into orbit to provide internet access on Earth, in direct competition with Elon Musk’s Starlink. 

In its application, which seeks waivers to expedite the project, Blue Origin says space-based data centers add a layer of connectivity redundancy by not relying on the global power grid and argues that “always-on solar energy, lack of land or displacement costs, and nonexistent grid infrastructure disparities, fundamentally lower the marginal cost of compute capacity to terrestrial alternatives.”

Orbiting data centers would also not be bound by the same cooling constraints that cause data centers to consume millions of gallons of water. 

Proposals to push computing power into the sky started gaining traction last year, with Google announcing Project Suncatcher in November. The tech giant aims to bring the data center project, considered a long-term “moonshot” by the company, online by 2027. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Blue Origin and Musk’s SpaceX were working on similar ventures, and a wave of startups, including Nvidia-backed Starcloud, are looking to be on the leading edge of space-based computing. 

Nvidia said earlier this month that it will start producing space-optimized versions of its most advanced processors, including those used in AI training and inference.

“Space computing, the final frontier, has arrived,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement at the time. 

Tech giants are looking to launch data centers into orbit at the same time that the asset class is increasingly facing development hurdles on the ground. Power access is a key bottleneck for new development, and community opposition to the sprawling projects is growing around the country, including in data center hubs like Virginia. 

As corporate giants fight to dominate the space between Earth and the moon, NASA unveiled plans Tuesday to spend $20B over the next seven years to build a base on the moon as part of President Donald Trump’s goal to have a permanent lunar outpost by 2030 that will “ensure a sustained American presence,” as outlined in a December executive order. The idea of putting data centers on the moon has been around since at least 2021. 

NASA has tapped SpaceX and Blue Origin to help establish a permanent U.S. presence on the moon, but a recent report from the space agency’s inspector general said delays are likely, Bloomberg reported.