Chip giant Intel is seemingly retaining its interest in space data centers.
According to patent analysis platform Patentlyze, Intel has published a continuation application for an orbital data center (ODC) architecture filed December 29, 2025, published last week on August 6, part of a family of patents which propose an unconventional two-tier network in which legions of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are coordinated from a handful of more powerful platforms above, which perform edge compute functions serving the LEO network below.
“LEO satellites need to be simple to reduce costs, especially since battery and thruster life is low because of many orbital adjustments caused by Earth's gravitational pull and solar storm damage,” reads an Intel patent filed Feb 17, 2023, and published Feb 3, 2026. “These limited satellite capabilities require routing that is computed by other, more capable compute nodes (eg, on-Earth). Thus, the following approaches include the use of higher-than-LEO orbit satellite constellations—having more processing power—to offload and handle some of the Earth-based processing.”
Intel’s ODC plans are not new, given its patent family spans back to a provisional application filed February 21, 2022. What’s new is that the company is pursuing a continuation application for a roughly four-year-old idea.
