--- title: Heat Is an Orbital Data Center’s Greatest Foe. These... description: Caltech and startup Sophia Space have patented a modular chip cooling system called Sophia TILE designed for orbital data centers. Each tile integrates solar... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/heat-is-an-orbital-data-center-s-greatest-foe-these-tiles-dump-it-at-the-source--objoiox9z twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Heat Is an Orbital Data Center’s Greatest Foe. These Tiles Dump It at the Source. | daily.dev og:description: Caltech and startup Sophia Space have patented a modular chip cooling system called Sophia TILE designed for orbital data centers. Each tile integrates solar... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/heat-is-an-orbital-data-center-s-greatest-foe-these-tiles-dump-it-at-the-source--objoiox9z og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/oBJOIox9z.png og:image:alt: Heat Is an Orbital Data Center’s Greatest Foe. These Tiles Dump It at the Source. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Heat Is an Orbital Data Center’s Greatest Foe. These Tiles Dump It at the Source. **[Singularity Hub](https://daily.dev/sources/singularityhub)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Caltech and startup Sophia Space have patented a modular chip cooling system called Sophia TILE designed for orbital data centers. Each tile integrates solar cells, processors, memory, thermal insulation, and optical communication into a single unit, using infrared radiation to dump heat directly into deep space rather than relying on bulky separate radiators. Thousands of tiles could link together to form large computing arrays in orbit, launching compactly and unfolding once in space. A demonstration mission is targeted for late 2027, with a 2,000-tile array capable of delivering up to one megawatt of computing power by 2030. The project is part of a broader international race toward orbital computing, with competitors including China's ADA Space, SpaceX, Starcloud, and Blue Origin. Key challenges remain: space debris collision risk, astronomical interference from large satellite constellations, and the fact that even a megawatt-scale orbital array is dwarfed by ground-based data centers delivering hundreds of megawatts. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Sophia Space raises $10M seed to demo novel space computers](https://daily.dev/posts/sophia-space-raises-10m-seed-to-demo-novel-space-computers-rtizubrdh) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Orbital Inference Data Center Bets On Space GPUs](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-inference-data-center-bets-on-space-gpus-1tc8u7ied) · IEEE Spectrum · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why space is actually a terrible place to cool a data center](https://daily.dev/posts/why-space-is-actually-a-terrible-place-to-cool-a-data-center-r3qn0htir) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Orbital Data Centers Are Seductive on Paper, but Face Daunting Challenges in Reality](https://daily.dev/posts/orbital-data-centers-are-seductive-on-paper-but-face-daunting-challenges-in-reality-edspvcdie) · Singularity Hub · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea.](https://daily.dev/posts/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-idea--wenaxolv3) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/heat-is-an-orbital-data-center-s-greatest-foe-these-tiles-dump-it-at-the-source--objoiox9z) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Heat Is an Orbital Data Center’s Greatest Foe. 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