As AI is driving explosive growth in data center construction on Earth, there's accelerating interest in moving some of the computing infrastructure to orbit. The past few months have seen a flurry of announcements for future orbital data centers. Is this the latest hype cycle for the space industry, or a greenfield opportunity? The answer may be somewhere in the middle.

In this week's On Orbit episode, we're bringing you a recent discussion from Via Satellite's Tech Webcast series. It features JJ Jaworski, CEO and co-founder of Edge Aerospace; Rob DeMillo, CEO of Sophia Space; and Ronald Birk, principal director of the Space Enterprise Evolution Directorate for The Aerospace Corporation. The conversation digs into potential architectures for orbital computing, the technological developments and challenges, and realistic use cases and potential early adopters for in-orbit computing.

This conversation was sponsored by Edge Aerospace.