October 31, 2025
The long-held vision of harvesting solar energy in space is transitioning from science fiction to a tangible goal, driven not by beaming power to Earth, but by a new, unexpected demand: fueling the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.
The concept of space-based solar power, once confined to laboratories like CalTech in the early 2000s, is gaining fresh momentum. While beaming energy directly to Earth remains a future prospect, startups are now focusing on a more immediate application: using the constant solar energy available in orbit to power data centers located in space itself.
US-based startup Starcloud, formerly known as Lumen Orbit, is at the forefront of this initiative. The company argues that space offers unparalleled advantages for energy generation. In a white paper, the firm highlights that solar arrays in space can achieve a capacity factor greater than 95%, unhindered by the day-night cycle, weather, or seasons. They estimate that a given solar array in space can generate over five times the energy of an identical array on Earth.
"The only cost on the environment will be on the launch, then there will be 10x carbon-dioxide savings over the life of the data center compared with powering the data center terrestrially on Earth," said Philip Johnston, CEO and co-founder of Starcloud, in a recent NVIDIA blog post. The tech giant is backing Starcloud through its NVIDIA Inception program.
NVIDIA further underscored the sustainability benefits, noting that space-based data centers can use the vacuum of deep space as an "infinite heat sink," eliminating the need for fresh water for cooling. The constant solar exposure also removes the requirement for large-scale battery storage or backup power systems.
To realize this vision, Starcloud is partnering with Colorado startup Rendezvous Robotics, which specializes in in-space construction. Rendezvous's patented TESSERAE technology uses swarms of autonomous robots to assemble modular tiles into large-scale structures. This technology is considered crucial for building the massive, gigawatt-scale solar arrays needed to power high-performance computing in orbit.
"The collaboration represents one of the first concerted efforts to use autonomous in-space construction to build orbital computing at scale," Rendezvous stated.
The first tangible step in this plan is the upcoming November launch of Starcloud-1, a refrigerator-sized satellite carrying an NVIDIA H100 GPU, intended to demonstrate the core concept.
While this space-to-space power model advances, the broader field of beaming solar energy from space to Earth has faced hurdles. NASA concluded last year that the technology does not yet meet its standards for priority investment, though it continues to support foundational research.
The race to harness solar power, whether in orbit or on the ground, continues to accelerate globally. As startups like Starcloud look to the skies, nations including China and the United Arab Emirates are pushing forward with gigawatt-scale terrestrial solar projects, underscoring the growing demand for clean, reliable energy to power the digital future.
Source: cleantechnica
