Well, this is the 21st Century after all:
Axiom Space and Spacebilt have announced plans to add optically interconnected Orbital Data Center (ODC) infrastructure to the International Space Station (ISS).
The company plans to launch two Axiom Orbital Data Center (AxODC) Nodes by the end of 2025, with at least three running by the end of 2027. It all sounds very exciting until you consider that Axiom Data Center Unit One (AxDCU-1), which eventually launched to the ISS in August, was a prototype that was roughly the size of a shoebox.
AxDCU-1 is more of a demonstrator to show that the concept works – think of an edge device on-orbit that can host hybrid cloud and applications, as well as cloud-native workloads. The AxODC Nodes are altogether more serious beasts. In addition to being interconnected, the hardware will be supported by an Optical Communication Terminal (OCT), allowing service to be provided to any spacecraft or satellite equipped with compatible OCTs.
So Cloud Computing for spacecraft. It will be interesting to see where this goes, and how they handle the power demands of an orbiting data center.
1 comment:
Still makes more sense than running AI centers in space, like Eric Schmidt wants to do. They're talking about needing more than 90% of the electricity generation of the entire freaking planet for AI centers. AI just sucks too much power to be worth it. I've read that a single ChatGPT query consumes around 10 times more energy than a Google search does.
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