The largest orbital compute cluster of 10 satellites is open for business

Good news!

"For all the hype about data centers in space, there just aren’t very many GPUs up there. As that starts to change, the near-term business of orbital compute is starting to take shape.

The largest compute cluster currently in orbit was launched by Canada’s Kepler Communications in January, and boasts about 40 Nvidia Orin edge processors onboard 10 operational satellites, all linked together by laser communications links.

The company now has 18 customers, and announced its newest on Monday — Sophia Space, a startup that will test the software for its unique orbital computer onboard Kepler’s constellation. ...

In the new partnership, Sophia will upload its proprietary operating system to one of Kepler’s satellites and attempt to launch and configure it across six GPUs on two spacecraft. ..."

The largest orbital compute cluster is open for business | TechCrunch

Currently 2.8 days to a low orbit collision disaster according to a new CRASH clock

Bad news! Is the low orbit space becoming overcrowded? Then there is already all the existing space junk floating. Questions like this were frequently raised during the past several decades. Like questions about space junk.

I have just blogged here about the debris dangers to air traffic caused by the recent explosion of the SpaceX Starship.

Recent news suggest there are plans to build data centers in space and so on.

"... Calculations show that, across all low-Earth orbit mega-constellations, a "close approach," defined as two satellites passing by each at less than 1km separation, occurs every 22 seconds. For Starlink alone, that number is once every 11 minutes. Another known metric of Starlink is that, on average, each of the thousands of satellites have to perform 41 maneuvers per year to avoid running into other objects in their orbit. ..."

From the abstract:

"The number of objects in orbit is rapidly increasing, primarily driven by the launch of megaconstellations, an approach to satellite constellation design that involves large numbers of satellites paired with their rapid launch and disposal. While satellites provide many benefits to society, their use comes with challenges, including the growth of space debris, collisions, ground casualty risks, optical and radio-spectrum pollution, and the alteration of Earth's upper atmosphere through rocket emissions and reentry ablation.
There is substantial potential for current or planned actions in orbit to cause serious degradation of the orbital environment or lead to catastrophic outcomes, highlighting the urgent need to find better ways to quantify stress on the orbital environment.

Here we propose a new metric, the CRASH Clock, that measures such stress in terms of the time it takes for a catastrophic collision to occur if there are no collision avoidance manoeuvres or there is a severe loss in situational awareness. Our calculations show the CRASH Clock is currently 2.8 days, which suggests there is now little time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm. This is in stark contrast to the pre-megaconstellation era: in 2018, the CRASH Clock was 121 days."

2.8 days to disaster: Why we are running out of time in low earth orbit

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions (open access)

RSO = resident space object

Google plans to begin testing solar-powered data centers in space by 2027. Really!

I am not sure this is a great idea! 

How much junk is already out there floating in orbit around the earth? 

How will the data be transferred back and forth?

"... CEO Sundar Pichai said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that Google will soon begin construction of AI data centers in space. The tech giant announced Project Suncatcher earlier this month, with the goal of finding more efficient ways to power energy-guzzling centers, in this case with solar power. ..."

Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says we’re just a decade away from a new normal of extraterrestrial data centers

Kessler Syndrome Space Debris Threatens Satellites

Recommendable! Over the past several decades many articles have been written about the dangers of accumulating space junk in critical low earth orbits.

This article stresses the risks of small particles and pieces of which there are many more, but they are also more difficult to observer and track!

Cleaning space trash may become fast an issue to be solved by humanity!

"... SpaceX’s Starlink satellites maneuvered around possible debris impacts 144,404 times over the first half of 2025. That’s a collision warning every couple of minutes, night and day, for six months straight—three times the rate of the previous six months. ..."

Kessler Syndrome Space Debris Threatens Satellites - IEEE Spectrum "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway"

A new ultra-black paint for satellites Could Help Fight Light Pollution. Really!

I bet this is wishful thinking and it ignores that all satellites block the view  on space!

Like putting lipstick on a pig. Each satellite still blocks earthbound astronomical observatories. This measure only seems to take care of the light streaks emanating from passing satellites.

According to Google Search:

1. "As of May 2025, there are approximately 11,700 active satellites orbiting Earth.". These are only active satellites. There are probably hundreds or even thousands of inactive/old satellites in orbit and tons of satellite debris.
2. "In the next five years, it is expected that tens of thousands of new satellites will be launched into Earth orbit, with estimates ranging from 58,000 to 70,000. This surge is largely driven by the deployment of large satellite constellations for internet access, like SpaceX's Starlink." 

We may have to put more astronomical observatories in earth orbit too!

"“A new type of super-black, highly resistant satellite paint promises an affordable fix to the satellite light pollution problem that has marred astronomical research since the recent advent of low-Earth-orbit megaconstellations…

The new coating is based on a proprietary blend of carbon black, a soot-like form of carbon, mixed with special binders that make the paint resistant against the harsh conditions in near-Earth space. In tests, the new coating outperformed other similar paints currently on the market not just in terms of its light absorption ability but also durability in space, Clifford said…"

Painting Satellites Vantablack Could Help Fight Light Pollution - Human Progress

Coating satellites with super-dark Vantablack paint could help fight light pollution crisis "Light streaks caused by passing satellites mar images taken by the world's most expensive telescopes. The problem is set to get worse."

An animation that shows 57,000 planned satellites being deployed around Earth through 2029 (Source)

Long March 8A Makes Debut: China's Answer to Starlink? with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! The catch up will take years!

Civilian Satellites to enter Into Very Low Earth Orbit

Recommendable! It might get a lot busier in earth orbit. However, this development seems to be in a very early stage.

"The first commercial very low-Earth orbit (VLEO) satellite will probably launch before the end of December, depending on how things go at China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and EOI Space. Both companies claim they are leading the way on an over-the-horizon idea that will bring satellites more down-to-Earth than today’s fast-growing low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.
VLEO refers to orbits between about 100 kilometers and 300 or 400 km (although the exact range depends on who you ask), in contrast to LEO, which starts around 300 or 400 km and extends up to 2,000 km. The first satellites in VLEO were short-lived US spy satellites in the 1960s and 1970s ...
“The telecoms industry is quite interested in VLEO, particularly for its low latency,” ...
need thousands of satellites ...
Telecoms companies will be able to shift some of their ground-based cellular and emerging LEO-based cellular infrastructure into VLEO ...
CASIC plans 300 such satellites by 2030, according to Space News. Keeping them in VLEO will require almost continuous thruster boosts, because atmospheric drag pulls satellites out of VLEO within six months to a year. ...
new propulsion technology for VLEO and materials that can withstand the corrosive effect of the atomic oxygen in VLEO ...
when they reach the end of their useful life, they will burn up faster, which helps to minimize space junk and odds that a cascade of collisions could ripple outward ..."

Civilian Satellites Descend Into Very Low Earth Orbit - IEEE Spectrum Climate monitoring and telecom stand to benefit from 100 km orbits

What is space junk? And how dangerous is it

Recommendable!

"... there are nearly 30,000 pieces—and that number only includes the pieces that are trackable. As space debris accumulates, it poses a growing challenge to space travel and exploration. ...
Formally known as orbital debris, space junk can be bits and pieces of inactive satellites, the rockets that carry them into space, debris from missiles, and detritus left behind by astronauts. Space debris can be as large as a school bus (like the inactive Envisat satellite, launched in 2002) or as small as paint chips. (As we’ll see, just because a piece of space junk is tiny doesn’t mean it’s harmless.) ...

Debris is accumulating in space at an alarming rate. Since space exploration began [about 1957-1961], more than 15,000 satellites have been launched. Now rocket launches take place more than three times per week, many deploying multiple satellites. And every new launch has the potential to generate more junk. In the year 2000, there were around 8,000 trackable pieces of debris in space. By 2019, there were roughly 20,000. Now, just four years later, there are nearly 30,000 pieces of junk larger than a softball floating in space. ...

Space junk can be dangerous because anything orbiting Earth is moving fast: debris in space travels at roughly 10 kilometers per second. That’s about 300 times faster than the maximum speed on most US highways. And since both objects in a collision would be moving fast, the relative speed would be even higher. A collision with a large object going that fast is obviously dangerous, but even junk as tiny as a paint fleck can be a problem.

Here are some examples of the damage space junk can do:

A ten-centimeter object—the size of a large bagel—could break an average satellite into pieces upon impact. There are roughly 30,000 similarly sized objects in space (including space junk and naturally occurring debris from comets or asteroids).

A one-centimeter object—the size of a Cheerio—could puncture the protective shields covering the International Space Station (ISS). In space, there are approximately 670,000 objects larger than a Cheerio.

A one-millimeter object—the size of a pencil point—could destroy a spacecraft’s ability to power up or to reach a certain altitude upon impact. There are 170 million objects larger than that in space. ..."

What is space junk? | McKinsey Space junk refers to fragments left behind in space. Most space junk is debris from rocket-launching material and disused satellites.

Take-off for UK-built supercomputer nanosatellites

Very impressive!

This official UK government press release describes these nano satellites as either microwave or shoe box sized, neither one seems nano to me! :-)

"Two of the Spire nanosatellites have an onboard supercomputer and intelligent machine-learning algorithms that can provide hyper-accurate predictions of the locations of boats, track their whereabouts and calculate their arrival times at ports, allowing port businesses and authorities to manage busy docks safely.
Two further Spire satellites launched alongside them today, both of which will be used to forge inter-satellite links. These connections allow satellites to act as relays, sending data to one another and down to ground stations, which cuts the time between data collection and its delivery. ...
The market for these smaller satellites, which are designed to orbit close to Earth’s atmosphere, is growing rapidly. According to a report by the Satellite Industry Association and Bryce Space and Technology, a total of 292 of the spacecraft were launched into space in 2017, compared with 55 in 2016. ..."

Take-off for UK-built supercomputer nanosatellites - GOV.UK Four government-backed nanosatellites no bigger than a microwave have launched today