In a filing submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday, SpaceX said it wants approval to launch up to one million satellites around Earth. The proposal outlines a vision in which the satellites would directly capture near-constant solar power to support data processing in space, potentially reducing costs and environmental impact compared with traditional, land-based data centres.
The filing was made a day after Reuters exclusively reported that SpaceX and Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, are in discussions to merge ahead of a high-profile public offering planned for later this year. Such a merger could accelerate SpaceX’s push to move data centre infrastructure into orbit, as Musk intensifies competition with major AI players such as Google, Meta and OpenAI.
Data centres form the physical backbone of artificial intelligence systems, but they are notoriously energy-intensive, consuming vast amounts of electricity and generating significant heat. In its FCC submission, SpaceX argued that space-based infrastructure could offer a fundamentally different cost and energy profile.
“By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers,” the company said in the filing. Regulatory approval from the FCC would be required before any such deployment could proceed.
While the proposed figure of one million satellites far exceeds anything currently in orbit, industry observers note that satellite operators often request approval for numbers well above their immediate deployment plans to preserve design and scaling flexibility. At present, there are roughly 15,000 satellites in space. SpaceX itself previously sought approval for 42,000 Starlink satellites before beginning rollout; its Starlink network now has about 9,500 satellites in orbit.
The plan also hinges on the success of Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation fully reusable rocket, which the company believes will dramatically lower launch costs. According to the filing, the economics of deploying large-scale orbital infrastructure depend on Starship’s ability to carry heavy payloads frequently and cheaply.
“Fortunately, the development of fully reusable launch vehicles like Starship that can deploy millions of tons of mass per year to orbit when launching at rate means on-orbit processing capacity can reach unprecedented scale and speed compared to terrestrial buildouts, with significantly reduced environmental impact,” SpaceX said.
Starship has conducted 11 test launches since 2023, and Musk has said the rocket could place its first commercial payloads into orbit this year. The vehicle is considered critical not only to expanding Starlink with more capable satellites, but also to any future plans involving large-scale space-based computing and energy systems.
If approved and ultimately realised, SpaceX’s proposal would represent a dramatic expansion of human-made infrastructure in orbit, pushing the boundaries of how and where the world’s most power-hungry digital technologies are built and operated.