Space is already a junkyard. AI data centers in orbit would make it worse

Low-Earth orbit is already dangerously crowded. Plans to build data centers there would accelerate a debris crisis no regulator has the power to stop

Alan Dyer / VW Pics / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

The case for building AI data centers in space rests on an appealing logic: solar power is stronger in space, permitting battles vanish, and launch costs keep falling. What it tends to skip past is the environment those data centers would inhabit. Low-Earth orbit isn't empty. It's a junkyard moving at 17,500 miles per hour, and every year the mess gets worse.

About 44,870 objects are now tracked by space surveillance networks, according to the European Space Agency's Space Debris User Portal. Of those, only about 9,300 are active satellites. The rest is debris: spent rocket stages, dead spacecraft, fragments from explosions and collisions. Those are just the objects large enough to track. ESA's debris model estimates 1.2 million objects between one and 10 centimeters in size, and 140 million smaller than one centimeter. A one-centimeter fragment at orbital velocity carries enough energy to destroy a satellite.

In 2024 alone, several major fragmentation events added more than 3,000 new tracked objects to the orbital population, according to ESA. Even without any additional launches, the number of space debris objects will keep........

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