For most of the space age, orbit was the domain of national agencies such as NASA, ESA, and Roscosmos. That is changing fast. Private companies are turning low Earth orbit from a government-run outpost into an emerging layer of commercial infrastructure. Within a few years, we will see the first orbital data centers, with servers designed to store, process, and move information at the edge of space.

This shift is inevitable. Compute demand and energy use are growing faster than terrestrial infrastructure can handle, and the cost of reaching orbit has collapsed. Twenty years ago, launching a kilogram into space cost more than a luxury car. Today, thanks to launch providers like SpaceX and others driving reusability and competition, that price has dropped to under $2,000 per kilo. This new paradigm hasn’t just made satellites cheaper to deploy, but is making entirely new business models viable, and thus rendering space less of a frontier and more of a foundation for a new kind of industrial revolution.

Commercial interest has followed. Companies such as Amazon’s Project Kuiper and Microsoft’s Azure Space are developing satellite constellations and cloud services that bring compute closer to where data is generated, including from space-based sources. Their goal is to reduce latency, enable real-time analytics, and add resilience to terrestrial networks that are under growing strain.

China is pursuing a parallel strategy through its state-backed tech companies and government agencies. Plans for the Guowang constellation aim to compete with Starlink and extend national control over digital infrastructure. Chinese firms are also exploring space-based computing platforms, recognizing that orbital infrastructure is a strategic asset, not just a commercial one.

The impact will reach far beyond consumer services. Orbital data centers can support autonomous systems, financial networks, environmental monitoring, and defense operations. All of these require near-instant processing and high data bandwidth that will soon exceed terrestrial limits. 

The challenge is to design data centers that are native to orbit, not terrestrial copies placed in space. Space offers constant solar energy and a natural cold sink that can improve efficiency. The engineering issues of radiation, hardware durability, and remote maintenance are real but solvable. The upshot being that by  harnessing uninterrupted solar energy and leveraging the cold of space for more efficient thermal management, the momentum to process more data in orbit is undeniable.

The real risk is continuing to think about orbit the same way we always have.    

Space is no longer just a symbol of national ambition or a base for telecommunications and surveillance. It is becoming a backbone for the digital world. Putting compute in orbit will reshape how data moves and how global infrastructure operates, much like railroads and undersea cables reshaped the last industrial revolutions.

That is the future we are building at Sophia Space.