// ai in space
A dated, sourced record of space-based computing since 2023: hardware that has flown, regulatory filings, funding rounds and stated plans, with flown hardware labeled separately from proposals.
Researched and fact-checked by AI, with no human review. How we verify
28 entries from 31 sources. Checked for news weekly; last checked
This tracker follows efforts since 2023 to put data-center computing in space. It records processors and demonstration units that have reached orbit or the Moon, applications to regulators, reported funding rounds and published plans. It covers Starcloud, SpaceX, Google, Axiom Space, Lonestar, Blue Origin and others. Entries were last checked on October 6, 2026.
Each title starts with a label. Flown marks hardware that has launched or reported results in space. Filing marks a regulatory document, Funding a reported round with an amount, Deal an acquisition, and Plan an announcement or study. Target marks a future launch, with who set the date and when. A filing is a request, not permission. The February 2026 notice from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on SpaceX's application accepted it for filing and asked for comments. Statements by companies about their own results are reported as claims.
Left out on purpose: Earth-observation satellites that simply carry onboard processors, deals for computing in ground data centers, rocket development, and commentary on whether the economics work. Starcloud appears under its earlier name, Lumen Orbit, in 2024. Its Y Combinator profile lists a February 2025 news item on the renaming. The 2024 HPE entry takes its launch date from NASA's mission page. Lonestar's 2025 payload reported results in transit. NASA said the lander carrying it was on its side after touching down on March 6, 2025, and the mission ended early. Dates are those given by each source.
Targets set by the organizations named. Dates like these often move.
Scheduled
Sidus Space said on September 28, 2026 that its LizzieSat-4 satellite carries a Lonestar hosted payload. It said the satellite is targeted to launch on SpaceX's Bandwagon-6 rideshare no earlier than April 2027. Lonestar had said in April 2026 that its first StarVault payload would fly on LizzieSat-4 that October.
Source: Sidus Space to Launch LizzieSat-4 and LizzieSat-5 Together on SpaceX Bandwagon-6, Sidus Space
Scheduled
Google said in a September 24, 2026 blog post that it will put two satellites in orbit in 2027. It said they will test high-bandwidth laser links between spacecraft. Its November 2025 announcement had set early 2027 as the goal for launching two prototype satellites with Planet.
Source: Behind Project Suncatcher, our moonshot to put AI in space, Google
Scheduled
TechCrunch reported on August 21, 2026 that Starcloud's near-term goal is to fly two Starcloud-2 compute satellites in 2027. It said the 8-kilowatt satellites would fly as rideshare payloads. In March 2026, Payload had reported the company's second flight as scheduled for later that year.
Source: Starcloud raises $250 million for orbital data centers as launch options dry up, TechCrunch
Axiom Space said it operates two Axiom Resilient Compute units in orbit, launched earlier in 2026 with Kepler Communications' relay constellation. It said it has confirmed links between them and to the ground. Its post-quantum encryption test ran on the ground. It said an in-orbit demonstration is next.
Source: Axiom Space, Kepler Ready Orbital Computing for Quantum Era, Axiom Space
A prototype satellite for Google's Project Suncatcher, built with Planet Labs, launched on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare from Vandenberg. Payload reported that it carries four Google Trillium Tensor Processing Units and has about 1 kilowatt of solar power. It said the satellite runs Gemini queries in short bursts.
Source: Transporter-18 Tests the Building Blocks of Orbital Data Centers, Payload
Google said its peer-reviewed paper detailing the research behind the Project Suncatcher mission is now available in the journal Joule. In the same post, it said it had confirmed contact with the prototype satellite launched that day. It said the satellite was operating as expected.
Source: Our Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is in orbit., Google
Nvidia said SpaceXAI's planned first-generation Starmind AI satellite will be based on an optimized version of Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale system. It said so in a press release about SpaceXAI's computing plans. The release describes a plan and gives no launch date.
Source: SpaceXAI Adopts NVIDIA Vera CPU to Accelerate Agentic AI at Massive Scale, NVIDIA
Starcloud added $250 million to its Series A round at a $2.3 billion valuation, Via Satellite reported. It said Manhattan West led the expansion, with Nvidia and Cisco Investments among the new investors. It said the company is working toward an 88,000-satellite constellation.
Source: Starcloud Adds $250M to Series A at a $2.3B Valuation, Via Satellite
SpaceX made public its S-1 registration statement, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, on May 20, 2026. Via Satellite reported that the filing lists large-scale orbital AI compute among its growth strategies. It said the filing names possible regulatory delays, including at the FCC, as a risk.
Source: SpaceX’s IPO Filing Gives First Look Into Company’s Financials, Via Satellite
Aetherflux raised a $275 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, led by Index Ventures, Payload reported. It said the company is rebranding as Cowboy Space. The company plans a rocket whose upper stage would operate as a 1 megawatt data center. Its CEO said the first would launch no earlier than the end of 2028.
Source: Aetherflux Rebrands, Pivots Business—and Raises $275M, Payload
Lonestar announced StarVault and ordered a second payload from Sidus Space. It called StarVault the first commercially operational space-based sovereign data storage platform. It said the first payload was scheduled to launch in October 2026 on Sidus's LizzieSat-4. It said the second was targeted for 2027.
Source: StarVault: The World's First Commercial Data Storage Service from Space, Lonestar Data Holdings
Starcloud announced a $170 million Series A round at a $1.1 billion valuation, Payload reported. Benchmark led the first tranche and co-led the second with EQT. Payload said the company's second flight, with an Nvidia Blackwell chip and AWS Outposts hardware, was then scheduled for later in 2026.
Source: Starcloud Raises $170M Series A at $1.1B Valuation, Payload
Blue Origin asked the FCC on March 19, 2026 for permission to launch more than 50,000 satellites, TechCrunch reported. It said the satellites would do computing in orbit and use Blue Origin's planned TeraWave network for communications. It said the filing did not describe the plans in detail.
Source: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin enters the space data center game, TechCrunch
The FCC's Space Bureau accepted for filing an application SpaceX submitted on January 30, 2026. The application is for up to one million satellites at altitudes of 500 to 2,000 kilometers. Comments were due March 6. SpaceX asked to waive deployment milestone and surety bond rules. The notice is not an approval.
SpaceX confirmed in a statement that it had acquired xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company. Via Satellite reported that the statement set out plans for an orbital data center constellation. It said SpaceX had filed with the FCC for the constellation the previous Friday.
Source: SpaceX Acquires xAI to Pursue Orbital Data Center Constellation, Via Satellite
Kepler Communications launched 10 optical relay satellites on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg. Each is about 300 kilograms and is fitted with multi-GPU compute modules. Axiom Space says its first two orbital data center nodes launched to low Earth orbit on January 11, 2026 with these satellites.
Source: Kepler Successfully Launches First Tranche of Optical Relay Satellites, Kepler Communications
Starcloud says that in December 2025 Starcloud-1 became the first satellite to run a version of Google's Gemini in space. It says that in the same month Starcloud-1 became the first spacecraft to train a large language model, nanoGPT. Both are company claims. Its page also quotes Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis referring to Gemma models.
Source: Starcloud-1, Starcloud
Google described a research project to link solar-powered satellites carrying its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). In proton-beam tests of a Trillium TPU it reported no hard failures from total radiation dose up to the maximum tested. It planned two prototype satellites with Planet by early 2027.
Source: Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design, Google Research
The 60-kilogram Starcloud-1 satellite launched on SpaceX's Bandwagon-4 Falcon 9 flight. It carried an Nvidia H100 graphics processing unit (GPU), as a test of data center computing in orbit. IEEE Spectrum reported a planned altitude of about 350 kilometers and a three-year mission.
A Long March-2D rocket launched 12 satellites from Jiuquan, Xinhua reported. It said they are the first batch of the Three-Body Computing Constellation, developed by Zhejiang Lab with partners. It said they provide a combined 5 peta operations per second of computing power and 30 terabytes of storage.
Lonestar's Freedom payload launched aboard Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander. On March 5, before the landing attempt, the company said the payload had completed data storage and disaster recovery tests in space. It said the payload had also completed edge processing tasks there, with power and temperature readings stable.
Source: Lunar Data Center Achieves Success, Lonestar Data Holdings
Axiom Space says it deployed Data Center Unit-1 (AxDCU-1) aboard the International Space Station in the fall of 2025. It describes the unit as a data processing prototype running Red Hat Device Edge software. It says the aim was to demonstrate early orbital data center functions. The page gives no exact date.
Lumen Orbit raised $11 million in seed funding led by NFX at a $40 million valuation, TechCrunch reported. The Redmond, Washington startup, founded in January 2024, said it planned a demonstrator satellite carrying Nvidia graphics processors.
Source: 200 VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit's $11M seed round, TechCrunch
Thales Alenia Space released results of ASCEND, a space data center feasibility study. The study began in 2023 with European Commission funding under Horizon Europe. The company said cutting emissions would need a launcher with ten times lower life-cycle emissions. It said ASCEND aims to deploy 1 gigawatt before 2050.
Lonestar said its Independence payload was carried on Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander, which touched down on February 22, 2024. It said the payload exchanged documents with Earth and stored data for the State of Florida. The company called it the first data center test, run from the Moon's surface.
The ISS National Lab said before launch that Northrop Grumman's NG-20 mission would carry an updated HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 to the space station. It described the computer as a commercial off-the-shelf supercomputer. It said HPE was working with KIOXIA to add flash memory to test data storage and recovery on long missions.
Axiom Space announced agreements with Kepler Communications and Skyloom to demonstrate optical links of up to 10 gigabits per second. The links were for a planned orbital data center. Axiom Space planned to launch it by 2027 and fit it to its Axiom Station Hab One module. It planned to launch a prototype to the space station in 2024.
Lonestar Data Holdings said it had closed an oversubscribed $5 million seed round led by Scout Ventures. It said Seldor Capital was among the other investors. The release said the company was scheduled to launch a series of data centers to the lunar surface in 2023.
Axiom Space said on October 6, 2026 that two compute units launched this year in Kepler's satellite constellation are operating. Its post-quantum encryption test has so far run only on the ground.
Orbital data centers would run AI chips on near-constant sunlight. As of October 2026, Google and Starcloud have flown only small test satellites, and critics cite cooling, radiation and launch cost.
AI lets Mars rovers plan drives and pick targets, helps satellites decide which images to keep, and speeds up analysis of mission data. Most uses are narrow and closely supervised.