Latest news with #ADAspace
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
China Is Building an AI-Powered Supercomputer Network in Space
China is launching a space-bound AI supercomputer — and the first batch of the satellites it's comprised of was just sent up. As the South China Morning Post reports, the so-called "Three-Body Computing Constellation" project launched the first 12 of its planned 2,800 satellites last week from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The orbital supercomputer network will, when complete, allow for rapid in-orbit data processing rather than relying on terrestrial computing facilities to relay information to Earth and then back up to space. It also doesn't require the copious amounts of water ground-based computers need to stay cool. Each satellite, the SCMP notes, carries an eight-billion-parameter AI model that can process raw data in orbit. Paired with the satellites' massive computing power of one quintillion operations per second, the constellation is expected, when complete, to rival the world's most powerful terrestrial supercomputers. Launched from northwest China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, each satellite carries, per a statement from the ADA Space startup that helped launch the constellation, unique scientific payloads that can do everything from detect gamma ray bursts to create "digital twins" of Earth terrain for emergency services and other industries. While the concept of orbital computing is nothing new, this project is, as Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell told SCMP, "the first substantial flight test" of the gambit. As McDowell pointed out, theoretical space cloud computing projects are "very fashionable" right now, with private companies like Axiom Space and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin planning their own orbital computing satellites. Unlike terrestrial data centers, which, according to the International Energy Agency are on track to use as much energy as Japan by 2026, orbital data centers can "use solar power and radiate their heat to space, reducing the energy needs and carbon footprint," as McDowell told SCMP. With the launch of the first of its 2,800 satellites, China's orbital supercomputer puts the country ahead of the United States in the rival countries' space race, though there's no telling which will actually cross the finish line first. More on the space race: White House Announces It Can Now "Manipulate Time and Space"
The Verge
18-05-2025
- Science
- The Verge
China begins assembling its supercomputer in space
China has launched the first 12 satellites of a planned 2,800-strong orbital supercomputer satellite network, reports Space News. The satellites, created by the company ADA Space, Zhijiang Laboratory, and Neijang High-Tech Zone, will be able to process the data they collect themselves, rather than relying on terrestrial stations to do it for them, according to ADA Space's announcement (machine-translated). The satellites are part of ADA Space's 'Star Compute' program and the first of what it calls the 'Three-Body Computing Constellation,' the company writes. Each of the 12 satellites has an onboard 8-billion parameter AI model and is capable of 744 tera operations per second (TOPS) — a measure of their AI processing grunt — and, collectively, ADA Space says they can manage 5 peta operations per second, or POPS. That's quite a bit more than, say, the 40 TOPS required for a Microsoft Copilot PC. The eventual goal is to have a network of thousands of satellites that achieve 1,000 POPs, according to the Chinese government. The satellites communicate with each other at up-to-100Gbps using lasers, and share 30 terabytes of storage between them, according to Space News. The 12 launched last week carry scientific payloads, including an X-ray polarization detector for picking up brief cosmic phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. The satellites also have the capability to create 3D digital twin data that can be used for purposes like emergency response, gaming, and tourism, ADA Space says in its announcement. The benefits of having a space-based supercomputer go beyond saving communications time, according to South China Morning Post. The outlet notes that traditional satellite transmissions are slow, and that 'less than 10 per cent' of satellite data makes it to Earth, due to things like limited bandwidth and ground station availability. And Jonathan McDowell, a space historian and astronomer at Harvard University, told the outlet, 'Orbital data centres can use solar power and radiate their heat to space, reducing the energy needs and carbon footprint.' He said both the US and Europe could carry out similar projects in the future, writes SCMP.
