February 1, 2026 — 11:39am Save A SpaceX is requesting permission to launch as many as 1 million satellites into the Earth’s orbit in order to pull off Elon Musk’s latest grand vision of putting data centers in space to do complex computing for artificial intelligence. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission made late Friday, SpaceX said it’s creating the solar-powered network in order to “accommodate the explosive growth of data demands driven by AI.” SpaceX proposes that the sun - shown here in an image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory during a geomagnetic storm watch last year - would directly power the AI data centres in space. NASA/AP “Launching a constellation of a million satellites that operate as orbital data centres is a first step towards becoming a Kardashev II-level civilisation — one that can harness the sun’s full power — while supporting AI-driven applications for billions of people today and ensuring humanity’s multi-planetary future amongst the stars,” SpaceX wrote in the filing. The system, which could be launched via the company’s reusable Starship rocket, would serve as a lower-cost and more environmentally friendly alternative to land-based data centres, the filing states. Advertisement