The orbital arms race: China unveils 5-year plan for space-based data centres

Beijing pivots to "Space Cloud" as energy crises on earth threatens AI ambitions.

China has officially announced accelerated efforts to develop space-based data centres as part of a broader five-year technological and aerospace initiative, signalling a new frontier in global computing infrastructure and space competition.

The goal? To construct gigawatt-class solar-powered data centers in orbit, effectively moving the energy-intensive burden of AI processing away from Earth’s strained power grids and into the 24/7 sunlight of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The "Space Cloud" Roadmap (2026–2030)

The project is a cornerstone of China's upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan, which identifies the "Deep Integration" of space and AI as a national priority.

Unlike current satellites that act as "dumb pipes" (merely relaying data), space data centre satellites will feature high-performance AI clusters that process data directly in space.

The plan calls for a system that merges cloud, edge, and terminal technologies, allowing for ultra-low-latency AI workloads that never need to touch a terrestrial server.

China hopes to solve the "energy bottleneck" currently capping its AI growth by utilizing massive solar arrays in space, which are up to five times more efficient than those on the ground.

The "Three-Body" head start

China isn't starting from scratch. The national plan follows the successful launch of the "Three-Body Computing Constellation" in May 2025 by Zhejiang Lab.

• Phase 1 Success: The first 12 date center satellites are already operational, reportedly running Alibaba’s Qwen-3 AI model in orbit.

• The Scale-Up: CASC aims to expand this to a massive 2,800-satellite constellation by 2030, targeting a total computing power of 1,000 petaflops.

• Global reach: Once fully deployed, this "Space Cloud" could offer AI services to Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partners, bypassing traditional Western cloud providers like AWS or Azure.

The announcement is a direct challenge to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which recently sought FCC approval for a constellation of up to one million satellites designed to function as orbital data centers.

However, China’s biggest hurdle remains its lack of a fully operational reusable rocket, similar to the Falcon 9 or Starship. This makes the "per-kilogram" cost of launching heavy data center hardware much higher for Beijing.

The engineering nightmare: Radiation and cooling

Despite the optimism, experts have warned that "the void isn't a free lunch.” While space is cold, dissipating heat in a vacuum (where there is no air for fans) is notoriously difficult. China's plan relies on advanced closed-loop liquid cooling and massive radiators.

Moreover, to protect AI chips from cosmic rays, the hardware must be "radiation-hardened," which often reduces processing speed compared to ground-based equivalents.