Feasibility Study Says Orbiting Solar-Powered Servers Could Lower Carbon Footprint
Orbiting data centers could deliver more sustainability than their Earth-based counterparts, says a newly released feasibility study by Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture European aerospace company.
Supplying sustainable energy for servers that process nearly incalculable numbers of AI, cryptocurrency, and blockchain transactions is a pressing environmental challenge. But this is a challenge that needs to be met if Europe hopes to meet its target of net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.
Along with orbiting solar-powered servers’ potential to lower emissions through energy savings, Thales Alenia Space expects them to deliver a return on investment of several billion euros by 2050, reports The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The company’s feasibility study is comparing the environmental impacts of space-based data centers—powered by solar energy accessed beyond Earth’s atmosphere—to those of Earth-based data centers, said WSJ. Called ASCEND, short for “Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty,” the project was launched in 2023 and is funded by the European Commission.
The study’s head, Damien Dumestier, said the company has been coordinating “a consortium of 11 partners since January 2023” with an initial focus on the carbon footprint of Europe’s land-based data centers. He said the team already calculated the continent’s terrestrial data center CO2 equivalent consumption at 20 million tons per year from now until 2030. The ultimate goal, he said, is to target a power capacity of “10 Terawatt-hours (TWh) to cut the energy requirements of Earth-based data centers by 10%.”
Dumestier cited other environmental benefits of housing servers in space. Water consumption, he said, would be “greatly” reduced as space is relatively cold. Keeping servers cool on Earth currently requires “several tens of millions of liters” of water every year, he said.
The project envisions a capacity of 10 MW (megawatts) per orbiting data center, which Dumestier said would require a solar panel surface area of about 35,000 square meters (nearly 377,000 sq. ft). He compared that with the 7,500 square meter (about 80,700 sq. ft) solar panel surface area of the International Space Station, which is nearly one fifth its size.
The orbiting modules required for such a task would be large and heavy, said Dumestier. “We need to make sure that a suitable launch solution can be developed and that the overall structure is as light as possible to minimize the carbon footprint of launch operations. Optimizing payload weight and volume will also be a key challenge,” he added.
In a June press release announcing the feasibility study’s findings, the company said ASCEND, with help from aerospace launch company ArianeGroup and the European Space Agency, has “validated the feasibility of a launcher capable of conducting multiple launches while mitigating their carbon footprint.” The company said modular units comprising the data centers could be assembled in orbit using robotics.
Dumestier believes projects like ASCEND can advance space technology while lowering the environmental impact of digital technology. Space, he says, is “vital” for Earth’s future. “It offers multiple possibilities to complement terrestrial infrastructures. And it’s an unparalleled asset to better manage the delicate balance between developing human activities and protecting the environment.”
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