Google's Plan for Space-Based Computing

Two CubeSats orbiting around Earth after being deployed from the ISS. Google is looking at ways satellites can be used for data centres of the future (Credit : NASA)

The Sun produces more power than 100 trillion times humanity's entire electricity generation.

In orbit, solar panels can be eight times more productive than their Earth bound counterparts, generating energy almost continuously without the need for heavy battery storage. These facts have led a team of Google researchers to ask what if the best place to scale artificial intelligence isn't on Earth at all, but in space?

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