TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - China, through the technology company ADA Space, has launched the first 12 satellites for a space-based supercomputer network development project based on AI. The project aims to build 2,800 satellites to form an orbital computing system with self-processing data capabilities.
ADA Space developed the satellites in collaboration with the Zhijiang Laboratory and the Neijang High-Tech Zone. "These satellites will be able to process the data they collect themselves, rather than relying on terrestrial stations to do it for them," ADA Space announced as quoted from The Verge report, Wednesday, May 21, 2025.
The program is named "Star Compute" and is part of a constellation called the "Three-Body Computing Constellation." Each satellite carries an AI model with eight billion parameters and has a processing capacity of 744 tera operations per second (TOPS). Collectively, the 12 satellites that have already orbited can handle five peta operations per second (POPS). For comparison, a computer with Microsoft Copilot features only requires about 40 TOPS.
The network is expected to reach 1,000 POPS in the future, alongside the launch of thousands of other satellites.
These satellites are interconnected using laser communication technology with speeds of up to 100 Gbps and have a total shared storage capacity of 30 terabytes. In addition, each satellite carries scientific payloads, including X-ray polarization detectors to detect cosmic phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. The satellites can produce 3D twin digital data that can be used for emergency response, game development, and the tourism sector.
According to the South China Morning Post, the presence of space-based supercomputers not only speeds up data communication. The report noted that data delivery from conventional satellites tends to be slow and limited. Less than 10 percent of satellite data successfully reaches the Earth due to bandwidth limitations and the number of receiving stations.
Jonathan McDowell, a space historian and astronomer from Harvard University, said that orbital data centers have energy efficiency advantages. "Orbital data centres can use solar power and radiate their heat to space, reducing the energy needs and carbon footprint," he said. He also assessed that similar projects have the potential to be developed in the United States and Europe.
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