Orbital AI Computing: Carbon Tradeoffs Across Satellite Scale

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.14557v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) computing is emerging for low-latency, globally distributed AI services, enabled by advances in satellite constellations and reusable launch systems. However, its sustainability remains unclear. Prior work introduces ESpaS, a framework for estimating lifecycle carbon intensity, but models systems using generic datacenter configurations and does not capture modern AI hardware, where power, mass, and compute characteristics va