China plans space-based AI data centers, challenging Musk’s SpaceX ambitions

By Laurie Chen

BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) – China plans to launch space-based artificial intelligence data centers within the next five years, state media reported on Thursday, challenging Elon Musk’s plans to deploy SpaceX data centers in the sky.

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 cited by state broadcaster CCTV.

The new space data centers will “integrate cloud, edge and terminal (device) capabilities” and achieve “deep integration of computing power, storage capacity and transmission bandwidth”, enabling data from Earth to be processed in space, the report said.

US firm SpaceX expects to use funds from its planned $25 billion blockbuster IPO this year to develop orbital AI data centers in response to Earth’s energy constraints.

SpaceX plans to launch solar-powered AI data center satellites within the next two to three years, Musk said last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“It’s a no-brainer to build solar power data centers in space … The lowest-cost place to put AI is going to be space and that’s going to be true within two years, the last three,” Musk said.

He said solar generation in orbit can produce five times more power than panels on the ground.

According to a December CASC policy document, China plans to move energy-intensive loads of AI processing into orbit using “gigawatt-class” solar-powered hubs to create an industrial-scale “space cloud” by 2030.

The document identifies the integration of space-based solar power with AI computing as a key pillar of China’s economic development roadmap, the upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan.

The CASC plan also promises to “operate the flight of suborbital space tourism and gradually develop orbital space tourism” in the next five years, CCTV reported.

China and the US are competing to turn space exploration into a commercially viable business like civil aviation, while also wanting to be the first to exploit 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 main stumbling block is its failure to complete a reusable rocket test. US rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reusable rocket has allowed its subsidiary Starlink to gain a near-monopoly on low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and is also used for orbital space tourism.

Reusability is important in reducing the cost of rocket launches and making it cheaper to send satellites into space. China achieved a record 93 space launches last year, according to official announcements, buoyed by its rapidly maturing commercial spaceflight startups.

CASC’s plans were announced after the inauguration of its first School of Interstellar Navigation, housed at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, on Tuesday, aimed at fostering the next generation of space talent in frontier fields including interstellar propulsion and deep space navigation.

The new entity signals China’s ambitions to strategically transition from near-Earth orbit to deep space exploration.

“The next 10 to 20 years will be a window for lapfrog development in China’s interstellar navigation field. Fundamental innovation in basic research and technological breakthroughs will reshape the pattern of deep space exploration,” Xinhua wrote in the opening.

The U.S. is facing intense competition this decade from China to return astronauts to the moon, where no humans have gone since the last U.S. Apollo mission in 1972.

(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)