By Laurie Chen
BEIJING, Jan 29 (Reuters) – China plans to launch space-based artificial intelligence data centers over the next five years, state media reported on Thursday, challenging Elon Musk’s plan to use SpaceX data centers in the skies.
China’s main space contractor, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), has pledged to “build a gigawatt-class digital intelligence space infrastructure,” according to a five-year development plan cited by state broadcaster CCTV.
The new space data centers will “integrate cloud, edge and terminal (device) capabilities” and achieve “deep integration of computing power, storage capacity and transmission bandwidth,” allowing data from Earth to be processed in space, the report said.
US firm SpaceX expects to use funds from its planned blockbuster $25 billion IPO this year to develop AI orbital data centers in response to terrestrial energy constraints.
SpaceX plans to launch solar-powered AI data center satellites in the next two to three years, Musk said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.
“It’s a no-brainer building solar power data centers in space … the cheapest place to put AI is going to be space and that will be true in two, three years at the latest,” Musk said.
He said that solar generation in orbit can produce five times more energy than panels on the ground.
China also plans to shift the energy-intensive burden of AI processing into orbit, using “gigawatt-class” solar-powered centers to create an industrial-scale “Space Cloud” by 2030, according to a December CASC policy paper.
The document identifies the integration of space-based solar power with AI computing as a central pillar of the next 15th Five-Year Plan, China’s economic development roadmap.
The CASC plan also promised to “achieve suborbital space tourism flight operation and gradually develop orbital space tourism” in the next five years, CCTV reported.
China and the United States are competing as they seek to turn space exploration into a commercially viable business similar to civil aviation, as well as become the first to exploit the military and strategic advantages of space dominance. CASC has pledged to transform China into “the world’s leading space power” by 2045.
But Beijing’s main obstacle so far is its failure to complete a reusable rocket test. American rival SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reusable rocket has allowed its subsidiary Starlink to gain a near-monopoly on low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and is also used for orbital space tourism.
Reusability is key to lowering rocket launch costs and making it cheaper to send satellites into space. China achieved a record 93 space launches last year, according to official announcements, boosted by its rapidly maturing commercial spaceflight startups.
CASC’s plans were announced after China inaugurated its first Interstellar Navigation School located at the Chinese Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, with the aim of nurturing the next generation of space talent in frontier fields including interstellar propulsion and deep space navigation.
The new institution indicates China’s ambitions to shift strategically from near-Earth orbit operations to deep space exploration.
“The next 10 to 20 years will be a window for leapfrog development in China’s interstellar navigation field. Original innovation in basic research and technological breakthroughs will reshape the model of deep space exploration,” Xinhua wrote on the inauguration.
The United States faces intense competition this decade from China in its effort to return astronauts to the moon, where no man has gone since the United States’ final Apollo mission in 1972.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)