This text was initially printed at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to House.com’s Knowledgeable Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
The fast enlargement of artificial intelligence and cloud companies has led to an enormous demand for computing energy. The surge has strained information infrastructure, which requires numerous electrical energy to function. A single, medium-sized information heart right here on Earth can devour sufficient electrical energy to energy about 16,500 houses, with even bigger services utilizing as a lot as a small metropolis.
In house, sunshine – which photo voltaic panels can convert into electrical energy – is ample and dependable. On Nov. 4, 2025, Google unveiled Project Suncatcher, a daring proposal to launch an 81-satellite constellation into low Earth orbit. It plans to make use of the constellation to reap daylight to energy the following era of AI information facilities in house. So, as a substitute of beaming energy again to Earth, the constellation would beam information again to Earth.
For instance, if you happen to requested a chatbot tips on how to bake sourdough bread, as a substitute of firing up a data center in Virginia to craft a response, your question could be beamed as much as the constellation in house, processed by chips working purely on photo voltaic vitality, and the recipe despatched again right down to your system. Doing so would imply leaving the substantial heat generated behind within the chilly vacuum of house.
As a expertise entrepreneur, I applaud Google’s bold plan. However as a space scientist, I predict that the corporate will quickly need to reckon with a rising drawback: house particles.
The mathematics of disaster
Space debris – the gathering of defunct human-made objects in Earth’s orbit – is already affecting house companies, corporations and astronauts. This particles contains massive items, equivalent to spent rocket phases and lifeless satellites, in addition to tiny flecks of paint and different fragments from discontinued satellites.
House particles travels at hypersonic speeds of approximately 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 km/h) in low Earth orbit. At this velocity, colliding with a chunk of particles the dimensions of a blueberry would really feel like being hit by a falling anvil.
Satellite tv for pc breakups and anti-satellite tests have created an alarming quantity of particles, a disaster now exacerbated by the fast enlargement of business constellations equivalent to SpaceX’s Starlink. The Starlink community has greater than 7,500 satellites, which offer world high-speed web.
The U.S. House Pressure actively tracks over 40,000 objects bigger than a softball utilizing ground-based radar and optical telescopes. Nonetheless, this quantity represents less than 1% of the deadly objects in orbit. The bulk are too small for these telescopes to reliably determine and monitor.
In November 2025, three Chinese language astronauts aboard the Tiangong house station had been forced to delay their return to Earth as a result of their capsule had been struck by a chunk of house particles. Again in 2018, a similar incident on the Worldwide House Station challenged relations between the US and Russia, as Russian media speculated {that a} NASA astronaut could have intentionally sabotaged the station.
The orbital shell Google’s challenge targets – a Solar-synchronous orbit roughly 400 miles (650 kilometers) above Earth – is a chief location for uninterrupted photo voltaic vitality. At this orbit, the spacecraft’s photo voltaic arrays will all the time be in direct sunshine, the place they’ll generate electrical energy to energy the onboard AI payload. However because of this, Solar-synchronous orbit can also be the single most congested highway in low Earth orbit, and objects in this orbit are the most likely to collide with other satellites or debris.
As new objects arrive and existing objects break apart, low Earth orbit could approach Kessler syndrome. On this idea, as soon as the variety of objects in low Earth orbit exceeds a important threshold, collisions between objects generate a cascade of recent particles. Ultimately, this cascade of collisions may render sure orbits fully unusable.
Implications for Project Suncatcher
Project Suncatcher proposes a cluster of satellites carrying massive photo voltaic panels. They might fly with a radius of only one kilometer, every node spaced lower than 200 meters aside. To place that in perspective, think about a racetrack roughly the dimensions of the Daytona Worldwide Speedway, the place 81 vehicles race at 17,500 miles per hour – whereas separated by gaps concerning the distance it’s essential to safely brake on the freeway.
This ultradense formation is critical for the satellites to transmit information to one another. The constellation splits advanced AI workloads throughout all its 81 items, enabling them to “suppose” and course of information concurrently as a single, huge, distributed mind. Google is partnering with a space company to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 to validate the {hardware}.
However within the vacuum of house, flying in formation is a continuing battle in opposition to physics. Whereas the environment in low Earth orbit is extremely skinny, it’s not empty. Sparse air particles create orbital drag on satellites – this power pushes in opposition to the spacecraft, slowing it down and forcing it to drop in altitude. Satellites with massive floor areas have extra points with drag, as they’ll act like a sail catching the wind.
So as to add to this complexity, streams of particles and magnetic fields from the Solar – known as space weather – could cause the density of air particles in low Earth orbit to fluctuate in unpredictable methods. These fluctuations instantly have an effect on orbital drag.
When satellites are spaced lower than 200 meters aside, the margin for error evaporates. A single affect couldn’t solely destroy one satellite tv for pc however ship it blasting into its neighbors, triggering a cascade that might wipe out all the cluster and randomly scatter millions of new pieces of debris into an orbit that’s already a minefield.
The importance of active avoidance
To prevent crashes and cascades, satellite companies could adopt a leave no trace commonplace, which implies designing satellites that don’t fragment, launch particles or endanger their neighbors, and that may be safely faraway from orbit. For a constellation as dense and complex as Suncatcher, assembly this commonplace would possibly require equipping the satellites with “reflexes” that autonomously detect and dance by way of a particles discipline. Suncatcher’s present design does not embrace these energetic avoidance capabilities.
Within the first six months of 2025 alone, SpaceX’s Starlink constellation carried out a staggering 144,404 collision-avoidance maneuvers to dodge particles and different spacecraft. Equally, Suncatcher would seemingly encounter particles bigger than a grain of sand every five seconds.
At present’s object-tracking infrastructure is usually restricted to clutter bigger than a softball, leaving millions of smaller debris pieces successfully invisible to satellite tv for pc operators. Future constellations will want an onboard detection system that may actively spot these smaller threats and maneuver the satellite tv for pc autonomously in actual time.
Equipping Suncatcher with energetic collision avoidance capabilities could be an engineering feat. Due to the tight spacing, the constellation would wish to reply as a single entity. Satellites would wish to reposition in live performance, just like a synchronized flock of birds. Every satellite tv for pc would wish to react to the slightest shift of its neighbor.
Paying rent for the orbit
Technological solutions, however, can go only so far. In September 2022, the Federal Communications Commission created a rule requiring satellite operators to remove their spacecraft from orbit within five years of the mission’s completion. This usually includes a managed de-orbit maneuver. Operators should now reserve sufficient gas to fireside the thrusters on the finish of the mission to decrease the satellite tv for pc’s altitude, till atmospheric drag takes over and the spacecraft burns up within the environment.
Nonetheless, the rule doesn’t deal with the particles already in house, nor any future particles, from accidents or mishaps. To sort out these points, some policymakers have proposed a use-tax for space debris removal.
A use-tax or orbital-use payment would cost satellite tv for pc operators a levy primarily based on the orbital stress their constellation imposes, very similar to bigger or heavier autos paying larger charges to make use of public roads. These funds would finance active debris removal missions, which seize and take away essentially the most harmful items of junk.
Avoiding collisions is a short lived technical repair, not a long-term answer to the house particles drawback. As some corporations look to house as a brand new dwelling for information facilities, and others proceed to ship satellite tv for pc constellations into orbit, new insurance policies and energetic particles elimination packages can assist keep low Earth orbit open for business.
