SpaceX Seeks FCC Approval For One Million Satellites in Space
The European Space Agency says that 16,910 satellites currently orbit Earth, making this a 5,813% increase over current satellites.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2026 – SpaceX, submitted an authorization request to the FCC to operate their orbital data center system on Friday, kicking off the race to bring data centers to support AI in space.
The request asks for approval to launch and operate up to a one million satellite constellation that will utilize a sun-synchronous orbit to obtain near constant solar power.
“By directly harnessing near-constant solar power with little operating or maintenance costs, these satellites will achieve transformative cost and energy efficiency while significantly reducing the environmental impact associated with terrestrial data centers.” the request letter said.
SpaceX currently operates around 9,400 functioning satellites through its starlink broadband system, making this request a more than 100-fold increase in operational scale. The application letter doesn’t provide specific details on the satellites themselves, but does say it hopes to operate between 500 kilometers (km) and 2000 km above earth’s surface with orbital shells of 50 km suggesting there would be “sufficient room to deconflict against other systems with comparable ambitions”
In a post on X, George Mason University Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Professor Peter Plavchan disagreed with the assertion.
“One could in theory mass produce a small, cheap but operational satellite constellation that occupies every orbital altitude of interest to near its carrying capacity, and thereby prevent all other actors from putting their satellites in any of those orbits,” Plavchan said in the post.
“It's the ultimate first-mover territorial claim strategy in lieu of off-world space regulations.”
The scale and economics of this type of satellite deployment would likely rely on SpaceX's Starship rocket, which is still under development. Starship will have the capability to “deploy millions of tons of mass per year to orbit when launching at rate,” according to the release.
The next test for Starship has yet to be announced, but could happen sometime in March according to a post made by Elon Musk on X on Jan 26, 2026
Other companies in on the race
The technology to achieve what SpaceX is proposing may still be a few years off, according to a white paper released by Google in November.
Google announced its own moonshot pursuit of space based data centers called “Project Suncatcher”, which analyzes the possibility of space based data centers to support AI infrastructure on the ground.
The paper highlights that the principles of this approach are based on sound physics, and that economics of such a program are realistic by the mid-2030s, thanks to reusable rocket technology.
However, apparent barriers to this technology remain “such as thermal management, high-bandwidth ground communications, and on-orbit system reliability,” According to the Suncatcher announcement.
Jeff Bezos, speaking at the Tech Week summit in Turin, Italy, in October, predicted that these large-scale space based data centers would be something the public should expect to see in the next 20 years.
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