Table of Contents
JLL points to Google’s planned Project Suncatcher mission, expected in 2027, as one of the most important demonstrations to watch
In sum – what to know:
Orbital momentum – Data centers in space are moving from concept toward early deployment as companies explore alternatives to terrestrial constraints around power, land, and permitting.
Workload split – The most likely future is one of specialization, with orbital infrastructure potentially supporting certain energy-intensive workloads while terrestrial facilities remain dominant for latency-sensitive applications.
Critical milestones – Launch costs, operational validation, debris management, and terrestrial infrastructure constraints will determine whether orbital data centers move beyond niche deployments.
Once confined to science fiction, data centers in space are beginning to emerge as a potential extension of the global digital infrastructure ecosystem.
According to a recent research note from JLL, a combination of rising AI demand, power constraints, permitting challenges, and geopolitical considerations is prompting the industry to evaluate whether some computing workloads could eventually be deployed beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
The JLL eport argues that terrestrial pressures are becoming increasingly significant. Global data center energy consumption reached approximately 415 TWh in 2025, while installed capacity stands near 100 GW, with nearly 100 GW more expected online by 2030. At the same time, grid connection timelines in some markets now stretch from several years to as much as a decade. “Earth is becoming harder to build on, pushing operators to consider alternatives,” the report notes.
One of the central ideas explored by JLL is that orbital infrastructure would not replace terrestrial data centers. Instead, the future could involve functional specialization between the two environments.
“The workload split is realistic; the future isn’t terrestrial replacement but functional specialization,” Daniel Thorpe, head of data center research, EMEA at JLL, told RCRTech.
“The feasibility of orbital data centers ultimately depends on what type of workloads dominate future demand. AI training, batch processing, and simulation are inherently more tolerant of latency and intermittent connectivity and are also among the most energy-intensive workloads, making them prime candidates for orbital deployment where power is abundant. In contrast, real time inference, transaction processing, and latency sensitive applications will continue to favor terrestrial infrastructure located close to users and networks,” the executive said.
The report highlights how modern Earth observation satellites already generate enormous volumes of data in orbit. Processing that data closer to where it is created could reduce reliance on transmitting raw information back to Earth.
Thorpe said this distinction is important when assessing the near-term outlook. “So, the realistic near-term picture has two distinct tracks. Processing data where it’s already being generated in orbit is happening now and growing. Relocating Earth’s AI workloads to space is the speculative part but credible in principle,” he said.
However, significant technical and economic hurdles remain. Among the most important are launch economics. JLL identifies approximately $500 per kilogram as a critical threshold at which orbital computing could become cost-competitive with terrestrial alternatives. SpaceX’s Starship program is targeting launch costs as low as $200 per kilogram, though those targets have yet to be achieved at scale.
Operational validation represents another milestone. JLL points to Google’s planned Project Suncatcher mission, expected in 2027, as one of the most important demonstrations to watch.
“The most important operational proof point to watch is Google’s Project Suncatcher, planned for 2027. It is specifically designed to validate whether AI training workloads can reliably run in orbit, and a public confirmation of success would likely trigger accelerated investment from other hyperscalers,” Thorpe said.
The report also identifies space debris as a major challenge. More than 44,000 tracked objects larger than 10 centimeters currently orbit Earth, while the possibility of cascading collisions—often referred to as the Kessler Syndrome—remains a concern for any future large-scale orbital infrastructure.
As a result, JLL argues that launch costs, operational performance, debris management and terrestrial infrastructure constraints will all need to evolve favorably before orbital data centers can move beyond experimental deployments.
In a previous interview with RCRTech, Martina Raveni, senior analyst at GlobalData, talked about the challenges of deploying space data centers.
