You’d almost think they’re running out of room in space. SpaceX, Google and a host of others are ramping up their space activities even as a historic decision looms about whether Europe will launch its own crewed spacecraft.
SpaceX sent its massive Starship spacecraft into orbit today, marking a critical milestone to scale its Starlink communications network. SpaceX deployed 26 of its new Starlink V3 satellites that are equipped with solar arrays that generate twice as much power as prior versions and are designed to transmit data more rapidly. Starship has a capacity of up to 60 V3 satellites, representing about 20 times the Starlink downlink capacity deployed by a Falcon 9 launch. Starlink currently has a constellation of 11,000 satellites in orbit.
“It’s not out of the question that at some point, Starlink will deliver the majority of the world’s internet, at least in countries we’re allowed to operate, which is the vast majority of countries,” said Elon Musk, SpaceX CEO.
The reusable Starship Super Heavy Rocket and booster is designed to lift more cargo into orbit at a cheaper price than any previous spacecraft. Among Starship’s future missions is the return of U.S. astronauts to the Moon.
Later this week, on October 1, Google takes the first step toward launching AI data centers into space. The MVP satellite will be loaded onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. MVP is a test of four specialized chips called tensor processing units, which have the computing power of one server in a data center. MVP is part of the company’s Project Suncatcher program.
MVP is a low-power experiment with just one kilowatt of power generated by the spacecraft’s solar panels but it’s designed to ferret out any hardware difficulties caused by the harsh operating environment of space. Radiation, for example, can cause bit flips that alter binary code. Right now, the chips can only operate for 15 minutes before they need to switch off for cooling. The satellite will answer simple AI queries for a year before it descends into the atmosphere for a burnout. Expectations also are low, with James Manyika, Google’s senior vice president for research, telling the New York Times it doesn’t anticipate the development of anything useful for 15 years.
Meanwhile, the upcoming launch of a Pelican-12 satellite from Planet Labs confirms that the trend toward space edge computing and on-board processing of AI is here to stay. The Pelican-12 uses Nvidia Jetson modules for onboard image processing, feature extraction and automated anomaly detection. Legacy satellite systems had to download raw, uncompressed imagery to ground stations for analysis, a process that caused downlink bottlenecks and delays accessing time-sensitive images. On-board processing means the satellite can deliver more structured responses to queries in real time, a boon for maritime awareness, disaster response and military intelligence.
On the near horizon is a decision scheduled for December 15 as to whether Europe will build its own crewed spacecraft. The meeting of European ministers is largely seen as a political one in response to the perceived unreliability of President Trump toward notional allies. An EU decision to proceed with its own crewed space program would represent a significant end-to-end investment that would be historic. Basically, the EU would have to replicate NASA, building upon the European Space Agency (ESA) already in existence. An EU crewed space program would require a spacecraft, a launch abort system, orbital control facilities to name just a few requirements. Despite its costs, the Trump Administration appears to have heightened interest in European control of its own space destiny.
In the shorter term, ESA is proceeding with the development of its own military reconnaissance satellite network to replace fragmented national networks supplemented by commercial satellites. ESA also is funding a study for the feasibility of creating a dedicated satellite constellation for the Arctic, a move that may be prompted by President Trump’s continuing interest in Greenland.
“As Arctic activity increases, the need for resilient, high-integrity communications becomes unavoidable,” notes Oliver Schiewe, vice president of GomSpace which will undertake the study being paid for by the Danish government. You don’t need a long-range satellite camera to read between the lines. Space is more important than ever.
