China plans space‑based AI data centres, challenging Musk’s SpaceX ambitions
By Laurie Chen
BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) – China plans space-based launch artificial intelligence The growth of data centers over the next five years is challenging Elon Musk’s plan to put SpaceX data centers in the skies, state media reported on Thursday.
China’s main space contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), has pledged to “build gigawatt-class space digital intelligence infrastructure,” according to a five-year development plan reported by state broadcaster CCTV.
The report stated that new space data centers will “integrate cloud, edge and terminal (device) capabilities” and enable “deep integration of computing power, storage capacity and transmission bandwidth”, allowing data from Earth to be processed in space.
US firm SpaceX expects to use funds from its blockbuster $25 billion IPO planned this year to develop orbital AI data centers in response to terrestrial energy constraints.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Musk said SpaceX plans to launch solar-powered artificial intelligence data center satellites in the next two to three years.
“Building solar data centers in space is a no-brainer… The lowest-cost place to deploy AI will be in space, and that will be within two years, three years at the latest,” Musk said.
He said orbital solar power generation could produce five times more power than panels on the ground.
China also plans to shift the energy-intensive payload of AI processing into orbit using “gigawatt-class” solar-powered hubs to create an industrial-scale “Space Cloud” by 2030, according to a December CASC policy document.
The document identifies the integration of space-based solar energy with AI computing as a key pillar of the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan, China’s economic development roadmap.
The CASC plan also promised to “realize the flight operation of suborbital space tourism and gradually develop orbital space tourism” in the next five years, CCTV reported.
China and the United States are competing to turn space exploration into a commercially viable business akin to civil aviation, while also being the first to reap the military and strategic advantages of space dominance. CASC has pledged to transform China into the “world’s leading space power” by 2045.
But Beijing’s biggest bottleneck so far is its inability to complete testing of a reusable rocket. US rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reusable rocket has allowed its subsidiary Starlink to gain a near-monopoly on satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) and is also used for orbital space tourism.
Reusability is crucial to lowering rocket launch costs and making it cheaper to send satellites into space. China set a record 93 space launches last year, according to official announcements, encouraged by rapidly maturing commercial spaceflight initiatives.
CASC’s plans were announced after China opened its first Interstellar Navigation School at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday; This school aimed to develop next-generation space capabilities in frontier areas, including interstellar propulsion and deep space navigation.
The new institution signals China’s desire to strategically transition from near-Earth orbit operations to deep space exploration.
“The next 10 to 20 years will be a window for major development in China’s field of interstellar navigation. Original innovation and technological breakthroughs in fundamental research will reshape the pattern of deep space exploration,” Xinhua wrote in the opening.
The United States will face intense competition from China this decade in its efforts to return astronauts to the moon, where no humans have been since the last US Apollo mission in 1972.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)
