It’s brand new, but it’s already a big name in tech: earlier this year, the Lumen Orbit company launched by a trio of satellite engineers set out to improve space Internet with optimized satellite design.
Now VCs are flocking to the Redmond, WA based company, with a successful $11 million seed round providing a $40 million evaluation for the firm, according to Techcrunch this week.
People were calling it a moonshot, but coming out of Y Combinator’s demo day, Lumen Orbit was already turning heads.
So some big names are on board already, with more to come.
Some of these investors include NFX and Soma Capital, as well as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia as other players. Reportedly, there are already plans in place for a new round of funding.
Sending Our Data Centers into Space
So what does Lumen Orbit do that’s so attractive?
Essentially, the company wants to put orbiting data centers in space.
Proponents tout Lumen Orbit as part of the “new space” economy, where companies and nations are experimenting with the idea of locating data centers beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. For instance, a Eurozone plan called ASCEND (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero Emission and Data sovereignty) described this way by internal resources:
“ASCEND is a feasibility study led by Thales Alenia Space, for the European Commission as part of Horizon Europe programs. Study objectives are to demonstrate the technical feasibility and the environmental benefits to deploy large capacity data centres in space. “
The Case for Space Processing
One reason that innovators want to build data centers in deep space is to eliminate concerns about the amount of land and cooling resources needed for these massive systems.
Since space is infinite, the builders don’t have to worry about real estate – due to the low temperatures in deep space, they don’t have to worry about using millions of gallons of water to cool the hardware as it operates.
Essentially, the satellite centers would use solar power to operate, and surplus energy could be stored in batteries for times when access to the sun is compromised.
It seems like scientists have done the numbers, and some of these designs will allow for the energy needed to send the satellite data back to earth, as well as everything required for computing operations.
What’s Already Up There?
Do we already have data centers in space, or is this a radical departure?
There are some flagship projects that illustrate what’s possible: for example, the Stacked Miniaturized and Radiation Tolerant Intelligent Electronics (SMARTIE) installation provides high performance through using computer ‘tiles,’ each offering over 300 Gflops of computing power.
These satellites are handling AI-related tasks, too. They largely process sensor and instrument data, according to explanations by Wikipedia. What’s inside is a RAD750 radiation-hardened single-board computer developed by BAE Systems.
These and other designs demonstrate early first steps in this kind of construction.
Space Data Centers: The Price Tag
Essentially, the decreased need for resources in space satellite operations will translate to lower costs, according to some of the people on the inside.
“Instead of paying $140 million for electricity, you can pay $10 million for a launch and solar,” said Lumen Orbit cofounder Philipp Johnston, a Harvard and Columbia album. All three founders have impressive company and academic experience: Chief Technology Officer, Ezra Fielden worked at Airbus and contributed to NASA research. Adi Oltean was principal software engineer at SpaceX, working on Starlink. In interviews, Johnson and Fielden have talked about how their work led to the idea of utilizing outer space in this way, to put some of our big computing operations closer to the sun.
It might sound like a science-fiction concept, but data centers in space makes a lot of sense for some compelling reasons. As we move through these dynamic times, we’re trying to figure out what’s best for hardware design. If we can improve some hardware operations, it’s likely that we will, even if that means sending our high-powered artificial intelligence hardware into space. So look for this kind of thing to keep generating interest, and dollars.
