Astronomy Prints 🌌: Space Minds: Understanding what’s next for orbital data centers

Monday, June 15, 2026

Space Minds: Understanding what’s next for orbital data centers

06/15/2026

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This episode of Space Minds is from SpaceNews’ recent event on orbital data centers. There, SpaceNews journalists talk with industry leaders and analysts about what’s driving interest in the technology, the role power could play and why price may not be the only factor.

Understanding what’s next for orbital data centers

FROM THE CONVERSATION

Jeff Foust: You announced ... an agreement with Meta to provide power for their data centers. How did that come together?

Marc Berte, CEO, Overview Energy: They already have the ground infrastructure that we're going to leverage. They already have the solar projects. We just now make them work 24/7. I can't put words in their mouth, but I think that's what attracted them to this concept: 'We already have the data centers on the ground; we don't need to put them in space. We already have the power receivers on the ground; we don't need to build more of them. Now we can just power them from space.' And that's what I think did it.

Foust: What's your perspective, then, in all the interest we are seeing in orbital data centers?

Berte: I think the interest in orbital data centers isn't the applicability of space as a host environment for data centers; you're seeing the result of the grid being broken.

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