Kepler Communications had launched the largest compute cluster currently in orbit in January, and it now boasts of about 40 Nvidia Orin edge processors onboard 10 operational satellites, all linked together by laser communications links.
The company now has 18 customers, and announced its newest on Monday — a Sophia Space, a startup that will test the software for its unique orbital computer onboard Kepler’s constellation.
This comes amid growing buzz around orbital data centers. Experts believe that we won’t see large-scale data centers like those envisioned by SpaceX or Blue Origin until the 2030s, and that the first step will be processing data that is collected in orbit to improve the capabilities of space-based sensors used by private companies and government agencies.
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Kepler Communications says he doesn’t see itself as a data center company, but as infrastructure for applications in space, according to CEO Mina Mitry. It wants to be a layer that provides network services for other satellites in space, or drones and aircraft in the sky below.
Sophia, on the other hand, is developing passively-cooled space computers. This could reportedly help keep powerful processors from overheating without having to build and launch heavy, expensive active-cooling systems, solving a key problem faced by orbital data centers.
With the new partnership, Sophia will upload its proprietary operating system to one of Kepler’s satellites and attempt to launch and configure it across six GPUs on two spacecraft. Making sure the software works in orbit will be a key de-risking exercise for Sophia ahead of its first planned satellite launch in late 2027. For Kepler, the partnership will help prove the utility of the network.
Mitry said that satellite companies are now planning future assets around this model, pointing to the benefits of offloading processing for more power-hungry sensors, like synthetic aperture radar. The customers for this kind of work include the U.S. military. Kepler has already demonstrated a space-to-air laser link in a demo for the U.S. government.
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Mitry told TechCrunch that the company wants “more distributed GPUs that do inference, rather than one superpower GPU that has the training workload capacity,” since they believe it’s “more inference than training.”
“If this thing consumes kilowatts of power and you’re only running at 10% of the time, then that’s not super helpful. In our case, our GPUs are running 100% of the time,” Mitry said.
Sophia CEO Rob DeMillo points out that Wisconsin adopted a ban on data center construction last week, something some lawmakers in Congress are also pushing. The pushback against data centers on Earth are making the idea of data centers in space more appealing for tech companies.