Thermal Integrated LEO Edge (TILE) is a computing module measuring one meter by one meter by one centimeter. It is designed to radiate heat into space. Credit: Sophia Space
SAN FRANCISCO – Sophia Space announced the award July 30 of a patent, shared with the California Institute of Technology, covering large, modular space-based data centers.
The patent, issued July 14, covers the architecture for a modular, scalable, passively cooled, computing and data storage unit designed for assembly into large computing data centers powered by solar energy.
“It is one way of solving the problem of energy in space, meaning energy in and heat out,” Leon Alkalai, Sophia founder and retired NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory technical fellow, told SpaceNews. “It’s not the only way.”
The Space-Based Data Centers patent has its roots in Caltech’s Space-based Solar Power Project (SSPP), an internal research and development campaign to collect solar energy in space and transmit it to Earth. Based on that work, Alkalai and colleagues at Caltech and JPL began exploring the idea of using similar large deployable structures to gather energy for computing in space. Then, only the data would need to be transmitted to Earth.
