Environmental concerns are becoming more and more entrenched in the collective consciousness. Whether that’s through climate activists’ decisions about which works of art deserve to have soup thrown at them, or through their participation (and conspicuous absence) at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. and as discovered register (opens in new tab), the European Commission (EC) is exploring radical ideas to reduce the climate impact of data centers and other HPC (High Performance Computing) deployments. The concept involves placing them completely outside the Earth’s atmosphere, in the pitch-black void of space.
The EC-led feasibility study ASCEND (which stands for Advanced Space Cloud for Europe’s Net Zero Emissions and Data Sovereignty) EU ‘Horizon Europe’ initiative (opens in new tab) It is supported by a budget of 2 million euros. He also relies on multiple partners in the environmental, cloud computing, and space technology sectors. Thales Alenia Space (opens in new tab)is a joint venture between European aerospace and defense companies Thales and Leonardo. According to Thales Alenia Space, the main motivation for feasibility studies has nothing to do with performance, longevity or energy efficiency. Instead, these elements are wrapped up in the larger environmental picture of addressing running emissions from operational data centers.
It’s easy to see how a data center in space can benefit the environment. Since they are outside the Earth’s atmosphere, the emissions associated with their operation no longer affect our planet. (outside of the carbon compensation programme). However, even as companies continue to improve the power efficiency of their hardware products with each generation, increasing performance requirements for the latest he HPC hardware from prominent hardware vendors has led to energy (and environmental) footprint continues to grow. That’s what ASCEND aims for.
The idea is to build a data center that can be fully powered by solar panels. Solar panels are already achieving higher efficiencies in outer space. It can deliver power in the “hundreds of megawatts” range. These orbiting data centers connect to Earth using optical links and do the heavy lifting of transmitting information from orbit. According to Thales Alenia Space, Europe has already mastered the underlying technologies that can create such a viable deployment scenario.
Of course, even when we start setting up data centers in space, it doesn’t completely eliminate concerns about air emissions. The CO2 emissions from building and deploying spacecraft capable of carrying data center payloads add to the data center’s overall carbon footprint, negating the environmental benefits of operating in space. There is a possibility. And, of course, this translates into improved payload capacity with modern (and future) rocket technology. A single SpaceX Falcon Heavy can carry far more payload at once than his multiple Falcon launches have ever attempted.
ASCEND’s first task, therefore, is whether it makes more sense to “yet” into space rather than building more data centers on the surface of the Earth (or in the deep ocean, where Microsoft has successfully explored). to calculate.Through Project Natick (opens in new tab)).
But even if ASCEND finds out that launching a rocket puts environmental concerns out of their minds, there’s always a choice… Can you shoot with a slingshot? SlingShot is a private company commissioned by NASA to test launch systems. (opens in new tab)The SlingShot does away with fossil fuel-intensive rockets and puts cargo into space by attaching payloads to one end of a giant rotating arm powered by an electric motor. By rotating the spinning arm at approximately 450 revolutions per minute, payloads mounted in data centers can be launched into space at speeds reaching 8,000 Km/h. It’s certainly one way to control carbon emissions.
Whether by rocket or other specialized means of propulsion, ASCEND’s second task is to understand whether data center payloads can function after being rocketed and deployed into space. . It wreaks havoc on anything but the most resilient hardware installations. And even if they can operate, there are many other concerns such as maintenance, upkeep, rapid data center obsolescence, and the ability to decommission these space facilities. There’s enough “space junk” in Earth’s orbit to avoid adding a few obsolete data centers.
Overall, this is still exploratory research and will likely be revisited as technology advances. did. The same is true for computing in general. So it’s only a matter of time before ASCEND’s (or another party’s) solution fits the problem they’re trying to solve.
