Space Race for Data Centres: Blue Origin’s Project Sunrise
The ambition of moving the world’s most demanding digital infrastructure beyond the confines of Earth is rapidly accelerating, with Jeff Bezos’ space technology company Blue Origin unveiling plans for an orbital data centre network.
Blue Origin has filed an official request with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch and operate a constellation of up to 51,600 AI satellites, known as Project Sunrise. The network is designed to host orbital data infrastructure, marking a major expansion of Blue Origin’s focus beyond its core launch services.
Project Sunrise is intended to meet the ever growing demand for AI workloads.
The FCC filing positions orbiting servers as “a complement to terrestrial infrastructure by introducing a new compute tier that operates independently of Earth-based constraints”.
The case for space
The argument underpinning Project Sunrise is Earth’s infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the power demands of AI.
Blue Origin claims that it will be difficult to build all the necessary AI infrastructure on Earth and “space-based data centres can help break this bottleneck”.
The company argues that moving computing capacity into orbit offers key advantages over land-based data centres, which contend with constraints such as land availability, massive energy consumption and extensive cooling requirements.
Blue Origin also highlights environmental benefits, stating: “The Project Sunrise system will ease mounting pressure on US communities and natural resources by shifting energy- and waterintensive compute away from terrestrial data centres, reducing demand on land, water supplies and electrical grids.”
From a financial perspective, the company argues that orbital infrastructure lowers the marginal cost of compute capacity.
In its FCC filing, it adds: "The built-in efficiencies of solar-powered satellites, always-on solar energy, lack of land or displacement costs and non-existent grid infrastructure disparities fundamentally lower the marginal cost of compute capacity compared to terrestrial alternatives."
Technical ambitions and regulatory hurdles
Blue Origin plans to put up to 51,600 satellites into a path around Earth called a sun-synchronous orbit, which will keep them in constant sunlight. This will be crucial for keeping the computing services running continuously without interruption.
The satellites would operate at altitudes between 500 and 1,800 kilometres, with each orbital plane hosting between 300 and 1,000 satellites.
Communication between the satellites would primarily rely on optical intersatellite links (laser links), enabling high-speed data transfer. These links will be supported by a mesh network architecture for efficient data routing.
Connectivity to Earth will be managed via another of Blue Origin’s planned projects, the TeraWave space broadband service.
The company is seeking FCC authorisation to use Ka-band radio frequencies for telemetry, tracking and control operations.
Blue Origin has acknowledged the environmental concerns associated with deploying such a vast number of satellites, stating its intention to comply with guidelines to minimise orbital debris and deorbit its satellites within five years of the end of their operational lives. It also committed to working with the astronomy community to minimise the satellites’ brightness and impact on astronomical observations.
The project faces significant challenges, including the fact that Blue Origin has only flown its New Glenn rocket – which it plans to use for Project Sunrise launches – twice.
Moreover, the company has yet to launch a single TeraWave satellite, with plans to launch the first of its 5,000-plus TeraWave orbiters before the end of 2027.
The race to orbit
Blue Origin is not alone in its orbital data centre aspirations. The proposal comes amid a broader industry push to expand space-based capabilities and supports the exponential growth of digital services globally.
SpaceX has filed its own application for up to one million orbital data centre satellites, which Amazon called on the FCC to deny, claiming it would take “centuries” to deploy.
Elsewhere, startup Starcloud has proposed a constellation of up to 88,000 satellites.
These proposals share common design elements, such as the use of sun-synchronous orbits and optical intersatellite links.
