ORBITALLow-Earth orbit computing

ECU-1 constellation · operational

The data center that never touches the ground.

Artificial intelligence no longer fits on Earth. ORBITAL builds and operates computing infrastructure in low Earth orbit: permanent sunlight, radiative cooling into the vacuum at 3 K, zero hectares, zero water.

24Nodes in orbit
28.8PFLOPCompute deployed
11msLatency · Quito
100%Solar power

The thesis

Earth has run out of
energy, water, and land.

A gigawatt data center consumes as much electricity as a midsize city and evaporates millions of liters of water each year for cooling. In low Earth orbit, all three problems disappear at once.

01 / Energy

Sun without night

In a Sun-synchronous orbit, the panels receive constant irradiance with no atmosphere to filter it. No day-night cycle, no clouds, no seasonality.

1,361W/m² · solar constant
02 / Cooling

The vacuum is the heat sink

Deep space is at 2.7 K. Deployable radiators emit waste heat directly as infrared radiation. No cooling towers, no chillers, not a single drop of water.

0liters of water per year
03 / Latency

Light travels faster in a vacuum

In silica fiber, light travels at 67% of c. In a vacuum, it travels at 100%. Across continental distances, intersatellite optical links beat terrestrial fiber.

+47% faster than fiber
South America at night from low Earth orbit, with city lights forming constellations below.
Orbit 4,812 · 21:14 UTCPass over South America. Each node crosses the equator fifteen times a day.
Orbital computing node: a black anodized module with cooling fins and a gold thermal blanket.

The unit

One node. 1.2 petaflops.
Fourteen years without maintenance.

Each node is a closed system: compute, power, thermal control, and optical link in a single radiation-tolerant module. It launches folded, deploys in 90 seconds, and is never touched again.

Compute
1.2 PFLOP · FP8
Power
19.2 kW peak
Link
Optical · 400 Gb/s
Design life
14 years

Scale

What is already overhead.

24Operational nodes

Three orbital planes: equatorial, polar, and Sun-synchronous.

28.8PFCompute deployed

Equivalent to a 34 MW terrestrial data center.

4Ground stations

Quito, Singapore, Nairobi, and Svalbard. Continuous coverage.

99.98%Availability · 12 months

Not a single interruption attributable to the space segment.

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