There is a dramatic push of technology into space. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites are changing the broadband communications market and there's speculation about putting data centers in orbit. Analysts Ellie Brown and Johan Vermij join host Eric Hanselman to look at the practical aspects of this push into a new frontier as a preview to their upcoming webinar. The cost of access to space has been dropping significantly, but there are many considerations that impact the viability of some of these plans. LEO satellite lifetimes are shorter than geosynchronous ones and the sustainability impacts of the launch volumes necessary to maintain multiple, massive constellations are daunting. Space is an attractive vantage point for observation with imaging to support geopolitical needs and ecological ends, like methane emissions tracking. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is piercing cloud and vegetation layers to reveal landscape details.

Space-based data centers are seeing a lot of interest, but popular misconceptions about cooling capabilities may be adding more encouragement than is warranted. While space is "cold", radiating heat is more complicated in its vacuum. The International Space Station, with a massive radiation system, rejects only 70 KW of heat, less than a few racks of equipment and much less than a typical GPU cluster. And the need to service equipment on orbit hasn't been meaningfully addressed. Smaller satellites with distributed processing could pre-process data before it's sent to earth, but that will require greater levels of coordination to manage the massive scale on which this would have to operate.

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Host/Author: Eric Hanselman

Guests: Ellie Brown and Johan Vermij

Producer/Editor: Dylan Scheible

Published With Assistance From: Feranmi Adeoshun and Sophie Carr