Elon Musk Is Convinced He Can Turn Low-Earth Orbit Into a Gigantic Data Center

Orbital data centers are the latest big tech craze, promising to provide near-limitless power and capacity to support the AI boom without draining Earth’s resources. The industry’s biggest players are racing to deliver on that promise, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX is going all-in.

SpaceX’s Starlink is already the largest satellite constellation in orbit, but on Friday, the company filed an FCC application to launch an orbital data center constellation of up to 1 million Starlinks. These satellites would operate across a range of altitudes in low-Earth orbit (LEO), SpaceNews reports.

The idea raises immediate concerns about overcrowding in Earth orbit, which already contains more than 32,000 satellites and pieces of debris—with the vast majority in LEO. That’s according to retired Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, whose blog tracks the number of objects in orbit. Musk claims, however, that SpaceX’s orbital data center constellation would not increase the risk of in-orbit collisions.

“The satellites will actually be so far apart that it will be hard to see from one to another,†Musk said of the plans on Saturday in a post on X. “Space is so vast as to be beyond comprehension.â€

SpaceX’s most improbable venture yet

While the scale of SpaceX’s proposal is jaw-dropping, the FCC filing itself does not come as a surprise. Musk has been teasing the idea of a Starlink-powered data center for months now. Last October, he suggested SpaceX could build one by “simply scaling up Starlink V3 satellites, which have [high-speed] laser links.â€

“SpaceX will be doing this,†Musk added.

The company plans to launch the first batch of its third-generation Starlinks in the first half of 2026. These new satellites are designed to provide over a terabit per second of downlink capacity and over 200 gigabits per second of uplink capacity. That’s more than 10 times the downlink and 24 times the uplink capacity of second-generation Starlinks, according to SpaceX.

In December, Musk confirmed plans for a SpaceX IPO this year, with reports suggesting he made the decision in part to raise capital to support an orbital data center venture. The latest reports claim the company is targeting a mid-June IPO that will seek to raise up to $50 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.5 trillion, making it the largest in history.

SpaceX will certainly need the cash if it plans to launch up to 1 million V3 Starlinks. The company has already spent many billions of dollars building its current constellation of roughly 9,500 satellites.

The next generation of Starship—tentatively scheduled to launch for the first time in early March—is designed to enable mass deployment of Starlink V3. But with the rocket’s launch manifest still uncertain—not to mention the unprecedented technical and regulatory hurdles of putting a million more satellites into LEO—it’s unclear how SpaceX could deliver its orbital data center in a timely manner.

The filing did not include a deployment schedule or cost estimate, but SpaceX did request a waiver of FCC milestone requirements that typically require half of a constellation to be deployed within six years and full deployment within nine years, according to SpaceNews.

A recipe for orbital disaster?

Amid growing interest in orbital data centers, experts have raised concerns about the risks of overpopulating LEO with satellites. The more objects we put in orbit, the greater the risk of collisions. A recent study warned that if satellite operators suddenly lost their ability to perform collision-avoidance maneuvers, there would be a catastrophic crash in less than 3 days.

Such a collision could set off a major debris-generating event that would lead to even more collisions, potentially initiating the first stage of Kessler syndrome. This is a theoretical scenario in which LEO becomes so congested that collisions trigger a chain reaction, creating exponentially more debris. This would weaken the satellite networks we depend on and render some orbits useless for new satellites and space missions.

Musk is confident that the arrangement of his orbital data center would eliminate such risks. The application states that these Starlinks would operate in orbital shells ranging from 310 to 1,240 miles (500 to 2,000 kilometers) above Earth, and at 30-degree and sun-synchronous angles to maximize sunlight exposure for solar power generation, SpaceNews reports.

Beyond this, the filing reportedly offers few technical details, with specifics about satellite size, mass, and orbital parameters all absent. However, SpaceX did say it plans to put the satellites in “largely unused orbital altitudes.†Numerous questions about the timeline, cost, and risks of deployment remain unanswered, but that clearly isn’t stopping SpaceX from trying to get ahead in the orbital data center race.