Elon Musk and his aerospace company have requested to build a network that is 100 times greater than the number of satellites currently in orbit. On Friday, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch one million satellites to create an “orbital data center.” This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about Musk’s plans to build an orbital data center, as company insiders mentioned it following news that the CEO was reportedly preparing to take SpaceX public.
According to the filing seen by pcmagThis data center will run on solar energy and provide computing capacity for artificial intelligence requirements. SpaceX is requesting to “deploy a system of up to one million satellites to operate within a narrow orbital sphere spanning up to 50 km,” as described in the filing. According to SpaceX’s filing, “orbital data centers are the most cost-effective way to meet the growing demand for AI computing power” because they use “solar energy with low operating and maintenance costs.”
To give some scale of the astronomical number of satellites SpaceX is seeking, the company recently achieved a milestone with the launch of its 11,000th Starlink satellite. Because satellites can run into problems, there aren’t that many in orbit, but an unofficial website tracking Starlink data claims there are more than 9,600 satellites in orbit as of January 30, 2026. The FCC is likely to reduce the amount that SpaceX is asking for in its filing, as the federal agency has done in the past. Earlier this month, the FCC approved SpaceX’s request to deploy 7,500 more Starlink satellites, followed by another 7,500 satellites launched in 2022. However, this is much less than the approximately $30,000 amount that SpaceX first sought in 2020.
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