The European Union plans to put data centers into space, powered entirely by solar panels

CTOnews.com European Commission (EC) is exploring new ways to reduce the climate impact of data centers and other HPC (High Performance Computing) facilities, and they even intend to launch data centers into space, The Register reported on November 17.

The EC-led feasibility study ASCEND (European Net Zero Emissions and Data Sovereignty Advanced Space Cloud) is part of the European Union's "Horizon Europe" initiative and is supported by a budget of 2 million euros (currently about 14.72 million yuan).

CTOnews.com understands that the plan would build data centers powered entirely by solar panels, providing "hundreds of megawatts" of electricity. Data centers in space will be connected to Earth using optical communications, and according to its partner Thales Alenia Space, the EU already has the basic technology to make such a viable deployment possible.

However, rockets that launch data centers into space also seem to have a lot of carbon emissions, and long-term operations in space are also a problem.

Therefore, the first goal of the study is to assess whether the carbon emissions generated by building and launching a space data center are significantly lower than those of a terrestrial data center. The second objective is to demonstrate that it is possible to develop the required launch solution, i.e. whether it is feasible to mount the data centre on a rocket and place it in working orbit.