space

data centers in space are a horrible idea

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Artificial intelligence has turned energy into the new technological bottleneck. And faced with that limit, some of the largest companies in the world have begun to look up. To give some examples, Jeff Bezos has spoken of “giant AI clusters orbiting the planet” in a decade or two. Google has experienced with running artificial intelligence calculations on solar-powered satellites. Nvidia supports startups who want to launch GPUs into space. Even OpenAI has tried the purchase of a rocket company to ensure his own path off Earth. The promise is seductive: solar data centers running around the clock, without power grids or cooling towers. The problem is that, when you move from the story to physics, engineering and numbers, the idea begins to break down. Data centers in space. There is a question that surrounds this issue: why do technology companies want to send data centers to space? The motivation at first glance is clear. According to data from the International Energy Agencydata center electricity consumption could double by 2030, driven by the explosion of generative AI. Training and running models like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude requires massive amounts of electricity and huge volumes of water for cooling. In many places, these projects are already running into local opposition or physical network limits. In this context, space appears as a tempting solution. In certain orbits, solar panels can receive almost constant light, without clouds or night cycles. Besides, as Bezos and other defenders explainthe vacuum of space seems to offer an ideal environment to dissipate heat without resorting to cooling towers or millions of liters of fresh water. According to this argument, space data centers would be more efficient, more sustainable and, over time, even cheaper than terrestrial ones. For some executiveswould not be an eccentricity, but the “natural evolution” of an infrastructure that already began with communications satellites. When engineers raise their hands. Faced with the enthusiasm of corporate statements, several space engineering experts have been much more forceful. In one of the most cited texts on the subjecta former NASA engineer with a PhD in space electronics and direct experience in AI infrastructure at Google sums up his position bluntly: “This is a terrible idea and it doesn’t make any sense.” His criticism is not ideological, but technical. And it starts with the first great myth, the supposed abundance of energy in space. Solar energy is not magic. The largest solar system ever deployed outside of Earth is the International Space Station. According to NASA dataits panels cover about 2,500 square meters and, under ideal conditions, generate between 84 and 120 kilowatts of power, a part of which is used to charge batteries for periods in the shade. to put it in contexta single modern GPU for AI consumes on the order of 700 watts, and in practice around 1 kilowatt when losses and auxiliary systems are taken into account. With those figures, an infrastructure the size of the ISS could barely power a few hundred GPUs. As this engineer explainsa modern data center can house tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs. Matching that capability would require launching hundreds of structures the size—and complexity—of the International Space Station. And even then, each would be equivalent to just a few racks of terrestrial servers. Furthermore, the nuclear alternative does not solve the problem either since the nuclear generators used in space, RTGs, produce between 50 and 150 watts. In other words, not even enough to power a single GPU. Space is not a refrigerator. The second big argument against orbital data centers is cooling. It is frequently repeated that the space is cold, and that this would make it easier to dissipate heat from the servers. According to engineers, this is one of the most misleading ideas in the entire debate. On Earth, cooling is based on convection: air or water carries away heat. In the vacuum of space, convection does not exist. All heat must be removed by radiation, a much less efficient process that requires enormous surfaces. NASA itself offers a compelling examplethe active thermal control system of the International Space Station. It is an extremely complex network of ammonia circuits, pumps, exchangers and giant radiators. And even so, its dissipation capacity is in the order of tens of kilowatts. According to the calculations of the aforementioned engineercooling the heat generated by high-performance GPUs in space would require radiators even larger than the solar panels that power them. The result would be a colossal satellite, larger and more complex than the ISS, to carry out a task that is solved much more simply on Earth. And there is a third factor: radiation. In orbit, electronics are exposed to charged particles that can cause bit errors, unexpected reboots, or permanent damage to chips. Although some tests, such as those carried out by Google with its TPUs, show that certain components can withstand high doses, the failures do not disappear, they only multiply. Shielding systems reduces risk, but adds mass. And each extra kilo increases the cost of the launch. Furthermore, AI hardware has a very short lifespan, as it becomes obsolete within a few years. On Earth it is replaced; In space, no. As critics point outan orbital data center would have to operate for many years to amortize its cost, but it would do so with hardware that is left behind much sooner. So why do they keep insisting? The answer seems to lie less in current engineering and more in long-term strategy. All of these projects depend on the condition that launch costs fall drastically. Some estimatesthey talk about thresholds of about 200 dollars per kilo so that space data centers can compete economically with terrestrial ones. That scenario relies on fully reusable rockets like Starship, which have not yet demonstrated that capability on an operational scale. Meanwhile, terrestrial renewable energies they continue to get cheaperand storage systems They improve year after year. Furthermore, the story of the space fulfills another function because it positions … Read more

Welding in space is a physical nightmare, but the UK has a good reason to try it

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We have entered a point where great nations have one objective: spatial autonomy. And, although many factors come into play, one of the most important is the ability to manufacture and assemble in space. As? Welding directly in space, but although we have seen it in science fiction on numerous occasions, things get complicated when we want to apply it to the real world. Now, a British university believes it has found the solution. A ‘Wall-e‘ welder. Nightmare. Soldering on Earth is an extremely simple process. We only have to apply a very high temperature and both gravity and the atmosphere make it easy for us. In space, the thing changesturning something routine into a real physical nightmare. There are three elements that come into play: Microgravity: on Earth, gravity causes the drop of the binding metal (tin, for example) to fall on the elements to be joined. In space, since there is no gravity, surface tension is the dominant source: the molten metal does not stay in place, but tends to form spheres. Additionally, gas does not escape from the molten metal, causing porosities and further structural weakness. Pressure: There is no oxidation because there is no oxygen, but there is also no pressure, which lowers the boiling point of certain alloys. This can cause, at certain temperatures, some critical components of the metal to evaporate rather than melt. Again: the chemistry of the solder and the properties of the joint are altered. The politics of discard. If that were not enough, welding in space is a nightmare for astronauts who have suits that limit their movements and who would always be under the pressure of a spark or slag piercing the suit. Goodbye astronaut. That is why administrations have become accustomed to the logistics of disposal: rather than repairing something, it is better to throw it away and launch something new from Earth. Less risks, fewer headaches. ISPARK. Clearly, it clashes with the most current policy: that of recycling. A few days ago we saw that, while NASA wants to throw down the International Space Station to the trash, there are those who want to recycle it to take advantage of all the elements it has. And building platforms in space based on smaller parts is more reasonable than launching those pre-assembled structures from Earth. That’s where the discovery from the University of Leicester, in the United Kingdom. In collaboration with TWI Ltd, they have launched what they have called “ISPARK Project”, or “Intelligent SPace Arc-welding Robotic Kit”. It is not a new physical welding, but a robot to do the work. There are still issues that can compromise the integrity of the weld itself, but having a robot do the job eliminates the extreme risk for astronauts. And, precisely, the researchers point out that achieving this “will redefine how large structures are built and maintained in orbit” in the new era of the space economy. They are not the only ones, since companies like ThinkOrbital wave University of Texas they are also pushing this possibility. Roadmap. It must be clarified that it is a technology that has to be tested. The first step will be to subject the robotic system to tests in chambers that simulate the vacuum of space to verify both that the electric arc and that the behavior of the materials are stable in an environment without an atmosphere. In addition to the direct results, they will compare with a digital twin. It is a technology that virtualizes (thanks to computer calculations) the physics of welding in vacuum and microgravity. It is data with which they will train the robot, but also with which they will compare the results of the physical world. And, if everything goes well, in later phases the objective is to test it in orbital reality conditions. This is where other factors come into play such as radiation or dynamic thermal cycles (conditions of extreme cold and heat in a matter of an instant). In search of autonomy. Little joke with this. The “Smart Space Arc Welding Robotic Kit” has received funding through the UK Space Agency’s National Space Innovation Programme. Specifically, 560,000 pounds to develop this system. Everything is framed within a larger program of the Agency, which will allocate 17 million pounds to 17 space innovation projects. If we look at the global European “photo”, it is contextualized within a reality in which we also see that the European Space Agency seeks one thing: autonomy. The British agency and the ESA are tired of depending on NASA either Roscosmos for their space missions, and we are seeing how they develop technologies or inject more than 900 million euros to find a European replacement for SpaceX. And, obviously, assembling and fixing in space is much more sustainable than continuing to create technology that costs hundreds of millions of euros and is disposable. Images | University of Leicester In Xataka | We are launching more things into space than ever before. And the next problem is already on the table: how to pollute less

In 1919 the Germans decided to sink their entire fleet in the North Sea. The steel from those ships ended up in space

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At 11:20 in the morning of June 21, 1919, Admiral von Reuter’s ship began to signal to the rest of the German ships in Scapa Flow Bay, England. The taps and water intakes were opened, the pipes were destroyed, the portholes were dismantled: no one noticed anything. Until around midday, the Friederich Der Grosse began to list to starboard. It was already late, the German flag was flying from the 74 masts. Scapa Flow. The image tells the story of Scapa Flowthe sinking of the German fleet immediately after World War I. While the Allies negotiated the terms of the Armistice with Germany, the fleet was held captive and stationed off the British coast. Von Reuter feared that the Allies would divide up the ships, so he decided to sink it completely, at any cost. The British naval ships that were on maneuvers arrived at 2:30 p.m. and were only able to save one ship. The last to sink was the battlecruiser Hindenburg. Nine Germans were killed, 16 were wounded, 1,774 were detained. 52 ships were sunk on June 21 at Scapa Flow. But they are no longer there: they are on the Moon, Jupiter and beyond the orbit of Pluto. steel is steel. A tough guy, with bad temper and few words. But in 1945 (or a little before), everything changed. We didn’t realize it at first, but we quickly discovered that although all steels are equal, there are some steels that are more equal than others. I’m not going around the bush: what happened in ’45 was the atomic bomb, the device of the Devil that made us change geological era. The problem. Since the first atomic bombs exploded on the Earth’s surface, the air contains traces of radioactive elements. They are there, dissolved in it, but the amount is so small that they are harmless. Unless for some strange reason you have to blow in enormous amounts of air in the manufacturing process of some material. It’s almost useless to us. That is, all steel manufactured after the explosion of the first atomic bomb is radioactive. Very little, almost nothing. But enough so that some medical, physical or astronomical instruments do not work correctly. For example, radioactivity monitoring systems used by spacecraft. He tells it David Bodanis in “E = mc². Biography of the most famous equation in the world“, a book that, although it has become somewhat outdated, is still a delight. You may have heard the story, but it is a good story. Steel = expensive. In the book, Bodanis explains that, faced with this problem, uncontaminated steel became very expensive. Above all, because before ’45 we did not make steel in quantities so industrial as now. I imagine dozens of NASA engineers rummaging through their family’s cutlery so they can send reliable machines into space. Until someone remembered Kaiser Wilhelm’s ships. The peculiarity of Scapa Flow. There are sunken ships in many places, but there are not many shallow inlets with 52 sunken ships in their waters. Not all of them were there, but a few were enough for us to manufacture the equipment that the Apollo mission left on the lunar surface, that which the Galileo probe took to Jupiter, and that which the Pioneer probe is taking even further. The evil, the sea. In Xataka | Quantum find in Cambridge points to solar ‘Holy Grail’: single-material solar panels In Xataka | The Atacama salt flat is the key on which the electric car industry pivots. And it’s starting to dry

China is launching more rockets into space than ever before. And the reason is very simple: not to depend on Starlink

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China has taken the lead in a disputed area: that of space sovereignty. To talk about space is to think directly about the POTbut the photo has changed in recent years. The space race It is no longer just a matter of government agencies, but also of private companies as SpaceXthe Spanish PLD Space either Blue Origin. Europe seeks its space without depending on anyone and countries like China and India are taking steps to expand your borders by looking into space. And, earlier this month, China complete four space missions. It is a clear blow to the United States. Rhythm. 2025 has marked a turning point in China’s aerospace industry. The country has broke his record of launches with more than 80 orbitals throughout the year (it was on 68 launches), adding the one with three Long March rockets taking off less than 19 hours apart. Something like this is within the reach of very few. Specifically, only within the reach of SpaceX in terms of pace. stress test. The litmus test took place at the beginning of December, when the Chinese space agency carried out a stress test on its system. Between the 5th and 9th of this month, China overloaded its entire launch chain. They used four different launch sites to test the extent to which their launch, logistics and telemetry centers could operate in good conditions. With this, the country wanted to check to what extent its different centers can operate almost in parallel, without interference and without hindering each other. This is key for routine launches of mega satellite constellations, but also for rapid responses during a crisis. It is also a trial by fire to see how optimized the process is in which the rockets can spend the shortest time possible at the launch points, without forming bottlenecks. What do they throw?. For this operation, four ports were mobilized: Hainan, Taiyuan, Xichang and Jiuquan. And what they have put in the space is… a little of everything: Mission 1: A Kuaizhou-1A rapid-deploy rocket launched from Jiuquan. In the cargo there were VDES satellites to identify ships and their purpose is dual: to monitor maritime traffic, but also to have an analytical capacity for data on the high seas. Mission 2: a Long March 8A rocket designed for a high rate of launches that started from Hainan. It carried 14 Guowang satellites, the state’s answer to Starlink. This is also the most strategicsince the Long March 8A is designed to compete directly against Starlink’s Falcon 9 in costs and launch rate. Mission 3: another Long March, 6A. It left Taiyuan without a confirmed payload, although it is a rocket that has previously been used to launch more Guowang satellites into orbit. Mission 4: a Long March 4B that took off from Jiuquan and is the most “military” of all. Launched Yaogan-47, a satellite recognition to “census lands and estimate crops.” It is still a remote sensing satellite, and we are in a very complex moment in the Pacific. CAS Space The fear of Starlink. One of China’s goals is to have its own Starlink system. This involves thousands of satellites orbiting and providing service, something that cannot be launched in one go. This intense four-day campaign puts on the table the logistical capacity of the Chinese space agency to be able to launch many launches in a short space of time without jeopardizing their reliability. It is a movement that will allow climb the launch of thousands of Guowang satellites into orbit and, when we talk about “fear” of Starlink, we mean that China wants to occupy the orbital space before it runs out of chairs. It is estimated that Starlink has more than 6,000 satellites circling and another 42,000 planned. China has 25,000 planned between Guowang and G60, but in space the law of “first come, first served” applies. The International Telecommunications Union assigns orbits and frequencies under this principle, so China does not want to fall behind the West. Specifically, against the United States. Sovereignty. In fact, there is an interesting “prick” with Musk’s satellites that has nothing to do with communication. Starlink has already demonstrated its usefulness in the war context (andn the war in Ukraine, for example), but also, in 2021 Tiangong space station had to maneuver twice to avoid satellites starlink. And we already know that Russia, China and the United States are preparing (and according to the United States, more than just preparing) for a war in space. In the end, it is a matter of spatial sovereignty. The United States is the proper name when we think about space, but China has been strengthening its position for decades and more recently has begun to occupy that space. And from the European Union it is alsoe is testing the ground for that spatial sovereignty. The goal of all agencies and governments is the same: not to depend on external technology. And this stress test by China when it comes to launching is a blow to its biggest rival. Image | CAS Space, Galactic Energy In Xataka | After many years trying to copy the Falcon 9, Elon Musk believes there is a company about to achieve it

SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

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The Bloomberg Millionaires Index has moved its figures on great fortunes with a fact that is difficult to ignore: Elon Musk has become the first millionaire to exceed $600,000 million in estimated assets. According to he Bloomberg Billionaires IndexMusk’s fortune now amounts to about $638 billion, an unprecedented figure that places him in a completely new league within technological capitalism. The leap has been neither minor nor gradual. In a few weeks, the estimate of his assets has skyrocketed by more than $205 billion, driven, above all, by the expectation generated around the SpaceX IPO. SpaceX: Musk’s new gem. With a Tesla that seeks its place to define itself between an automotive or robotics company, the main engine of Musk’s fortune has moved towards the aerospace industry. SpaceX, majority controlled by Musk, has been one of the most valuable private companies in the world for years. The information about a possible IPO have revived investor appetite and valuations have skyrocketed internal of the company taking it up to 800,000 million dollars. With this, the valuation of Musk’s fortune has also increased. Bloomberg estimates that the company is already worth several hundred billion dollars, and Musk owns around 42% of capital, in addition to reinforced voting rights. Tesla, xAI and the rest of the Musk ecosystem. Although SpaceX makes headlines, It is not the only asset that supports Musk’s fortune. Tesla continues to be the other major pillar and, despite moving in a more complex context for the electric car and increasing pressure from Chinese manufacturers, the company maintains a stock market capitalization that is progressively recovering from reputational disaster What did the participation of its CEO in the cuts that DOGE carried out at the beginning of the year. Added to this are other less visible but relevant participations: xAI, the artificial intelligence company promoted by Musk, is consolidating itself as a business ecosystem highly concentrated in its figure, which amplifies any market movement, both up and down. Fortunes are not exact figures, but estimates. It is worth, however, putting the numbers about Musk’s fortune in context. Great fortunes are not balances in a checking account, but estimates based on the combined value of each millionaire’s business interests, properties and financial assets. And those estimates They vary depending on who calculates them and with what methodology. This is where the differences between indices appear. While the Bloomberg Index locates Musk’s fortune around $638 billion, Forbes offers a figure substantially lower: about 509,000 million. The gap is explained by several factors, including how SpaceX is valued. In other words, neither figure is “correct” in absolute terms. Both are reasonable approximations to an extremely complex heritage, but they serve to determine trends and a comparative value between great fortunes. One step closer to the first billion. Beyond the specific figure, this new record reinforces an idea that has been circulating for some time: Elon Musk is one of the clearest candidates to become the first billionaire in historythat is, being the first person to accumulate a fortune of one million million dollars. Yes SpaceX completes its IPO With the valuations that are being used today and Tesla manages to sustain its weight in the market, the jump to the billion is no longer an extravagant hypothesis and has become a plausible scenario in the near future. Musk’s milestone not only redefines the ranking of the richest in the world. It also underlines the extent to which economic concentration is occurring around a single person or company. In Xataka | Carnegie built libraries, Gates sold them on CD-ROM, Musk locked them in an AI: the history of knowledge control Image | SpaceXFlickr (Gage Skidmore)

The plan has always been to destroy the International Space Station in 2030. Someone thinks we can do something else

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The International Space Station this that falls. It has been orbiting the Earth since 1998 and was completed in 2011. The plan was to retire it in 2024, but the accounts did not work out and, in 2021, the NASA administrator set a definitive date: 2030. The question is whether it will last that long because a few months ago we already said that members of NASA expressed concern about the accumulation of problems technicians who were accelerating the decline of a seriously aging facility. air leaks, cracks in different modulesabsence of spare parts for critical systems and lack of budget to propose a solution It would be assumed that the Different agencies have been putting patches on for years. NASA has already commissioned SpaceX the development of a ship that would tow it to the space graveyard of the Pacific, but… is there no other solution for the 450-ton, $150 billion station? The answer is yes. At least, that’s what Greg Vialle, founder of a startup called Lunexus Space that is committed to recycling the International Space Station, thinks. Turning the International Space Station into a mine In the middle of last year, NASA had clear that he Point Nemoa remote location in the Pacific, 2,700 kilometers from the nearest pile of dirt, would be the station’s cemetery. There was only one thing I could avoid the dismantling: that ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency, refused to abandon the ship. Russia soon changed its mind by commenting that its cosmonauts were passing more time repairing equipment than conducting experiments. Come on, no matter how much they wanted to “annoy” NASA at a geopolitically unstable point, it didn’t work out for them. Everything was aimed at the disappearance of the current ISS, but there are those who have something to say. Lunexus Space is a startup focused on the development of industrial infrastructure in low orbit that reuse structures and space junk to facilitate the construction of goods directly in the lower atmosphere. The goal is to develop a kind of circular economy in low orbit by taking advantage of the tons of material already in space, eliminating the need to re-launch them from Earth. In Space Newsthe CEO of the company has developed an article in which he explains his plan to “avoid wasteful expenses.” Vialle affirms that the ISS has 430 tons of high-quality aluminum, titanium and other materials valuable for future space missions. He estimates the value of the material at $1.5 billion, which would be lost to the ocean floor if NASA’s plan goes ahead. And it also points out the almost 1 billion that NASA will spend on the vehicle that tows the station to its resting point. “It is a fiscally irresponsible plan that loses a strategic resource and a golden opportunity.” What he proposes is “a common sense alternative”: converting old infrastructure into raw materials for new construction. Their calculations highlight that launching a kilogram of material into space costs $3,500, but if they take materials from the ISS, the costs would drop entirely. And, faced with the 1,000 million dollars of the plan to sink it, Vialle suggests that Its recycling process could be carried out for about 300 million dollars to which an equivalent government loan would have to be added to launch the necessary infrastructure, appealing to significant savings for taxpayers while preserving valuable resources. American leadership, of course “How can we wait prospect, mine, refine and transport in deep space if we cannot extract the many tons of cataloged and space-grade materials that are already beginning to manage low Earth orbit?” Vialle appeals. But of course, there is a B side to this plan: Strengthen America’s Space Leadership. By receiving the ISS, the CEO believes that the seeds of “a new industry in space led by the United States will be sown, ensuring our economic and strategic leadership over competitors like China.” China too He has been planning his own station for years. And he compares the move to American manufacturing policy to prepare for the Second World War, japanese strategy in the 1970s that established the country as a technological miracle or Taiwan’s position with TSMC and chip manufacturing. His idea is for the United States to invest in resource management technologies in space, something that is taking its first steps and that, if it reaches a solid program, will make “the nation dominate the future of commerce and defense in orbit.” It is evident that Vialle has known what sticks to play in a moment as sensitive as the current one and, although in his letter he urges Congress to influence NASA’s decision to ‘deorbit’ the International Space Station, the space agency has already detailed that, after a session to evaluate the possibility of reusing the main components of the station, they did not receive any proposals of interest from the industry. On the other hand, the European Space Agency already pointed out that recycling in orbit was “a real challenge” and it was not clear whether the resources used to capture and process waste in space would be profitable. Either way, time is of the essence. We will see what happens with the ‘Recycle the ISS’ movement, but there are four years left and, as more and more voices point out, something must be decided because the installation is on its last legs. In Xataka | Decathlon has just made its way beyond sport: it will reach space with a prototype spacesuit for the ESA

Google is serious about putting data centers in space. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos rub hands

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While there are municipalities debating whether to let big technology companies install data centers in their domainsGoogle wants a strike further: taking the data centers to space. Google. The company revealed its intentions a few weeks ago and your Suncatcher project wants to install two prototype satellites before 2027. Curiously, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are more than delighted with the idea of ​​their rival. Suncatcher Project. Push the capabilities of the artificial intelligence requires that we train it and, for this, they are necessary huge data centers with spectacular computing power. The problem is that the energy needs of these facilities They are astronomical, becoming resource sinksmaking oil companies set aside their renewable energy plans and even raising the opening of “private” nuclear power plants. Suncatcher couldn’t have a more appropriate name. In space, without the influence of the atmosphere, solar panels They capture the light spectrum in a different way, enough to feed those data centers that seem insatiable, and what Google proposes is to build constellations of dozens or hundreds of satellites that orbit in formation at about 650 kilometers high. Each of them would be armed with Trillium TPU (processors specifically designed for AI calculations) and would be connected to each other via laser optical links. Pichai puts the topic anywhere. Although 2027 is the key date, it is evident that Google is very interested in airing its plans because it is a sign of both technological power and an invitation for interested entities to invest in the process – and a way to continue inflating everything around AI-. And the person who is practicing this speech the most is the company’s CEO himself: Sundar Pichai. Since we learned of Google’s plans, Pichai has spoken of the topic in every interview he has given. It does not tell anything new beyond that hope of having TPUs in space in 2027 and the ambition that in a decade extraterrestrial data centers will be the norm. Musk and Bezos: competition, but allies. And if Google is interested in selling its narrative, those who are also interested are two of its most direct competitors: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Both Musk with several of his companies and Bezos with Amazon Web Services are in the race for data centers and artificial intelligence. They have some of the largest on the planet, but they also have something that the rest of the competitors don’t: ability to launch things into space. Musk with SpaceX and Bezos with Blue Origin have the tools to put satellites into orbit, charging for each kilo they launch into space. And it is there, the more credible it seems that the future of computing is in low Earth orbit, the more economic and political sense they will make. SpaceX as Blue Origin. Both are Google’s competition, but also the option for Google to achieve its objective. And, ultimately, we keep seeing rival companies renting their services from each other. Data center fever in space. The truth is that, at first, it sounds like a crazy plan to build these extraterrestrial data centers, but from the most pragmatic point of view (removing logistics and the money that both development and each launch will cost from the equation), it is a plan that makes sense. In space, a panel can perform up to eight times more than on the Earth’s surface, in addition to generating electricity continuously by not depending on day/night cycles. It is something that would eliminate the need for huge batteries, but also for complex water-based cooling systems. And, as we said, Google is not alone in this. Currently, there is a fever for space data centers with big technology companies in the spotlight: Considerable challenges. Now, Google itself comment It will not be easy to carry out this strategy. On the one hand, the costs. The company claims that prices may fall several thousand dollars per kilo to just $200/kg by mid-2030 if the industry consolidates. They note that, in that case, the price of launching and operating a space data center could be comparable to the energy costs for an equivalent terrestrial data center. Another difficulty will be maintaining a close orbit between the satellites. They would have to be within 100-200 meters of each other for optical links to be viable. And most importantly: radiation tolerance by the TPUs. Google has been experimenting with this for years, but they must test the effects of radiation on sensitive components such as the HBM memory. Surely astronomers They will be delighted with this strategysame as with starlink. Image | THAT In Xataka | We are launching more things into space than ever before. And the next problem is already on the table: how to pollute less

We have been talking theoretically about data centers in space for months. A company already has a plan to set it up in 2027

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The Californian startup Aetherflux has announced which will launch its first data center satellite in the first quarter of 2027. It is the initial node of a constellation that the company has named “Galactic Brain”, designed to offer in-orbit computing capacity powered by continuous solar energy. The underlying promise. Aetherflux presents an alternative to the years of construction that terrestrial data centers require. According to Baiju Bhatt, company founder and co-founder of the financial firm Robinhood, “the race toward artificial general intelligence is fundamentally a race for computing power and, by extension, energy.” The company is committed to placing sunlight next to silicon and completely bypassing the electrical grid. How the project works. The Galactic Brain satellites will operate in low Earth orbit, taking advantage of solar radiation 24 hours a day, something impossible on land. Advanced thermal systems would eliminate the limitations faced by terrestrial data centers, which require large amounts of water and electricity for cooling. In addition, the constellation fits within Aetherflux’s initial plans: transmitting energy from space to Earth using infrared lasers. The competition is already underway. Aetherflux is not alone in this bet. Google presented in November your Suncatcher projecta plan to launch AI chips into space on solar-powered satellites. Jeff Bezos too expressed his optimism on large data centers operating in space in the next decade or two, a goal that Blue Origin has been working on for more than a year. SpaceX also works in use Starlink satellites for computing loads of AI. Musk himself wrote in The real obstacles. Although launch costs have decreased considerably, they remain prohibitive. According to recent estimateslaunching a kilogram with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy costs around $1,400. Google calculate that if these costs drop to about $200 per kilogram by 2030, as projected, the expense of establishing and operating space data centers would be comparable to that of terrestrial facilities. In addition, the chips will have to withstand more intense radiation and avoid collisions in an increasingly congested orbit. The urgency. Big tech is colliding with physical limits on Earth. From 2023, dozens of data center projects have been blocked or delayed in the United States due to local opposition over electricity consumption, water use and associated pollution. According to the consulting firm CBRElimitations in electricity generation have become the main inhibitor of data center growth around the world. The Aetherflux Calendar. The company, founded in 2024 and which has raised $60 million in financing, plans to first demonstrate the feasibility of transmitting space energy through a satellite that will launch in 2026. If all goes according to plan, the first Galactic Brain node will arrive in 2027. The company anticipates launching about 30 satellites at a time on a SpaceX Falcon 9 or equivalent, although if Starship becomes an option, they could orbit more than 100 data center satellites in a single launch. The long term strategy. Aetherflux hasn’t revealed pricing yet, but promise Multi-gigabit bandwidth with near-constant uptime. Their approach is to continually release new hardware and quickly integrate the latest architectures. Older systems would run lower priority tasks until the life of the high-end GPUs were exhausted, which under high utilization and radiation might not last more than a few years. Cover image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA In Xataka | OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 weeks after GPT-5.1: a maneuver that aims to cut ground on Google’s Gemini 3

Faced with the threat of an “orbital Pearl Harbor”, Europe has made the same decision as the US: shield space

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The race to militarize space has accelerated to an extent unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. The reasons are several, but the main one is driven by the combination of explicit russian threatscovert sabotage and an international architecture incapable of containing the emergence of atomic weapons out of the atmosphere. The last one to join: Europe. The war in orbit. Moscow not only has reactivated its classic nuclear discourse, but has opened a second front in low Earth orbit through the development of anti-satellite systems equipped with nuclear warheads that openly violate the Outer Space Treaty. In this context, European and North American experts match in which the Kremlin is lowering the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons both on Earth like in spacewhile experimenting with platforms capable of camouflaging orbital bombs designed to disable satellites essential for the economy, defense and communication. Thus, the very idea of ​​a “Space Pearl Harbor” (a nuclear explosion that destroyed thousands of satellites, blinded entire continents and turned low orbit into a radioactive dump for generations) has forced Europe to abandon the romantic vision of an exclusively civil space and enter a new strategic reality which combines deterrence, diplomacy and operational preparedness. The bet of the old continent. This turn has crystallized in a historic decision: For the first time, European Space Agency countries have approved funding a program designed explicitly for military functions. He ERS projectconceived as a “system of systems” equipped with surveillance capabilities, secure navigation, encrypted communications and Earth observation, marks Europe’s entry into the club of actors who recognize that their future security depends both on what happens on the ground and what happens hundreds of kilometers above it. The approved financing (1.2 billion euros with more to come) comes accompanied by an unprecedented political mandate that redefines the concept of “peaceful purposes” at a time when China multiplies its space capabilities and Russia turns orbit into a space hybrid pressure. The magnitude of the support, bordering 100% of what was requestedreflects an internal consensus: without its own capabilities, Europe would be a vulnerable spectator in a conflict that would be decided by the speed and resilience of its satellite constellations. The French and German response. On this new board, France and Germany have assumed a central role both for its industrial capacity and for its newly adopted conviction that the wars of the future will begin (or be decided) in space. Paris has invested 10 billion euros in its new Space Command, oriented to military operations in orbit, to shield satellites against kinetic attacks and to promote an interoperable architecture with NATO. Berlin, for its part, has announced an investment of 35 billion until 2030 to reinforce its own Space Command, develop guardian satellites and equip itself with advanced early warning systems. Both countries have publicly assumed that orbital infrastructure is so critical such as energy or digitaland that any Russian aggression could paralyze not only defense, but European civil society as a whole. National security is no longer decided solely on the eastern land border, but in a three-dimensional environment where the loss of a single satellite node can destabilize entire sectors. Nuclear beyond the atmosphere. Analysts agree that the most feared scenario is not a specific attack against specific satellites, but the detonation of a nuclear charge in orbitcapable of generating devastating electromagnetic pulses and cascading space junk that would render low orbit useless for decades. Historical precedents, such as try Starfish Prime that destroyed a third of existing satellites in the 1960s, serve as a warning of what it would mean to repeat a similar experiment today, with more than 10,000 active satellites. Such an explosion would kill astronauts, destroy global navigation infrastructure, fossilize the digital economy and cause a domino effect that could move the war from space to Earth. Although some experts hold While Moscow would only resort to such action in a scenario of terminal collapse, the mere existence of these capabilities forces Europe to prepare for a type of conflict that would break the traditional limits of deterrence. Political pressure and a new order. Fear of an orbital conflict has reactivated debates on nuclear disarmamentboth in the United States and in Europe, where legislators are promoting initiatives to revitalize multilateral negotiations that have been stagnant for decades. At the same time, ESA has achieved a record budget (22.1 billion euros) that not only finances its transition towards space security, but also promotes scientific and commercial programs, such as reusable rockets, Martian exploration or new astrobiological missions. This growth, supported by Germany, France, Italy and Spain, reflects the strategic convergence between defense, research and technological sovereignty. In the new scenario, Europe seeks not to be a secondary actor in the face of spatial duopolization between the United States and China, but to develop real autonomy that reduces dependence on private platforms like starlink or American systems such as the space interceptors of the Golden Dome. Militarize space. If you also want, the intersection between russian threatsAmerican technological advances and the European strategic awakening marks the beginning of a stage in which the Earth’s orbit is consolidated as the new global scenario military competition. What was once a scientific and commercial domain has become a space where the resilience of entire societies is decided. He ERS projectthe expansion of national space commands and the growing funding of dual capabilities make up a defense ecosystem that seeks to avoid a conflict that no one wants to imagine. And in that scenario, Europe seems to have understood that the only way to deter orbital escalation is to demonstrate that it has the same means to resist it, respond to it and recover. Image | RawPixelESA/Mlabspace In Xataka | The US wants to build an unprecedented anti-missile shield called “Golden Dome.” And SpaceX has the ideal technology In Xataka | Space solar never worked. A military escalation in orbit is making it a reality

We have left Moss out for nine months in space at the mercy of vacuum and radiation. He’s back alive and breaking records

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Life is much more tenacious than we usually think, even when we take it out of its cradle and expose it to the most hostile environment we know: the emptiness of the outer space. And to carry out this test, a team of scientists has decided to take a moss and expose it to conditions outside of Earth, giving a result that opens a path for us on how to create new ecosystems on other planets. The protagonist of this story is Physcomitrium patensor better known as primitive moss. And there were a series of Japanese researchers those who wanted to check What would happen if this little primitive moss was left outside the International Space Station. The logical a priori thing would have been that he would have died instantly, since he did not have oxygen, the environment was really aggressive, with a lot of direct radiation as he did not have the protection of our ozone layer and logically he was not in his natural habitat. But the reality is that he has managed to endure the absolute emptiness and the cosmic radiation for 283 days. But not only has it survived these conditions, but upon returning to Earth it has been planted and germinated. Without a doubt a great surprise in the face of the resistance that these organisms have. A round trip. The research, led by biologist Tomomichi Fujita of Hokkaidō University and published in iScience, started from a premise that seemed like science fiction: can a primitive land plant withstand prolonged exposure to cosmic elements without protection? To find out, in March 2022 they launched hundreds of samples aboard the ship Cygnus NG-17. Once on the ISS, the astronauts attached these samples to the outside of the station, orbiting at about 400 km altitude from the Earth’s surface. There they stayed for nine months, exposed to constant cycles of light and shadow, extreme cold, and relentless ultraviolet radiation. In January 2023, the samples returned in a SpaceX capsule (mission CRS-16) and when analyzed in the laboratory, the results perplexed the researchers. More than 80% of the spores had survived and were able to germinate. Not everything is the same. Just as two humans may not be equally resistant, something similar happens with mosses. In this research, we tried to verify the resistance of three types of fabric, but the winner was undoubtedly the sporophytewas the hardest fabric. Something that was already suspected, but the litmus test that this was was missing. In terrestrial laboratories, stress is usually tested separately. That is, in a season an organism is exposed to heat, or cold, or high radiation. But in this case everything happens at the same time, and that is why it was expected that his survival would be null with this combination of factors. But the reality is that the spores protected within the sporangium endured. And although the scientists noted a degradation of one type of chlorophyll due to visible light, the structural and genetic integrity of the plant remained intact enough to be “resurrected” upon returning home. Its importance. Growing a moss on the surface of the ISS seems insignificant and a silly waste of money. But the reality is that this finding has two very important readings. The first looks towards the stars and the terraforming process. It must be taken into account that mosses were the first plants to colonize land on our planet 500 million years ago. It can be said that they are natural pioneers thanks to the fact that they can settle on bare stones and then when they die, they generate soil where more complex plants later emerge. In this way, if they can survive space travel and withstand extreme conditions, they could theoretically be the biological vanguard. in lunar or martian bases to help modify its atmosphere and ecosystem. Something more urgent. Right now, our goal has to be to create crops that are more resistant to the extreme weather conditions we face on our planet. And the solution may lie in these spores and their genetics. Understanding the mechanism that gives them this great resistance is vital so that we can modify seeds of other crops with the aim of conferring the same resistance. A vital step to face everything that may be yet to come to our planet. Images | Mike Frandson POT In Xataka | Fungal spores and other microorganisms are candidates for surviving on the surface of Mars, according to NASA

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