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Large structures with hundreds of square meters of solar arrays would quickly suffer damage from small pieces of space debris and meteorites, which would over time degrade the performance of their solar panels and create more debris in orbit. Operating one million satellites in low Earth orbit, the region of space at the altitude of up to 2,000 kilometers, might be impossible to do safely unless all satellites in that area are part of the same network so they can communicate effectively to maneuver around each other, Greg Vialle, the founder of the orbital recycling startup Lunexus Space, told MIT Technology Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can fit roughly four to five thousand satellites in one orbital shell,\u201d Vialle says. \u201cIf you count all the shells in low Earth orbit, you get to a number of around 240,000 satellites maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n And spacecraft must be able to pass each other at a safe distance to avoid collisions, he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou also need to be able to get stuff up to higher orbits and back down to de-orbit,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo you need to have gaps of at least 10 kilometers between the satellites to do that safely. Mega-constellations like Starlink can be packed more tightly because the satellites communicate with each other. But you can\u2019t have one million satellites around Earth unless it\u2019s a monopoly.\u201d<\/p>\n On top of that, Starlink would likely want to regularly upgrade its orbiting data centers with more modern technology. Replacing a million satellites perhaps every five years would mean even more orbital traffic\u2014and it could increase the rate of debris reentry into Earth\u2019s atmosphere from around three or four pieces of junk a day to about one every three minutes, according to a group of astronomers who filed objections against SpaceX\u2019s FCC application. Some scientists are concerned that reentering debris could damage the ozone layer and alter Earth\u2019s thermal balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n The longer hardware survives in orbit, the better the return on investment. But for orbital data centers to make economic sense, companies will have to find a relatively cheap way to get that hardware in orbit. SpaceX is betting on its upcoming Starship mega-rocket, which will be able to carry up to six times as much payload as the current workhorse, Falcon 9. The Thales Alenia Space study concluded that if Europe were to build its own orbital data centers, it would have to develop a similarly potent launcher.\u00a0<\/p>\n But launch is only part of the equation. A large-scale orbital data center won\u2019t fit in a rocket\u2014even a mega-rocket. It will need to be assembled in orbit. And that will likely require advanced robotic systems that do not exist yet. Various companies have conducted Earth-based tests with precursors of such systems, but they are still far from real-world use.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #wed #put #data #centers #space<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Large structures with hundreds of square meters of solar arrays would quickly suffer damage from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[546,1757,1265,3300,5389,836,561,4212,3861,1719,909,2777,5390,5391,5392],"class_list":["post-5525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-amazon","tag-centers","tag-data","tag-data-centers","tag-data-centers-in-space","tag-elon-musk","tag-google","tag-musk","tag-nvidia","tag-put","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-starcloud","tag-thales-alenia-space","tag-wed"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AP24331768239638-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Economical launch and assembly<\/strong><\/h3>\n