In his account on platform X, the billionaire commented on a post about SpaceX scaling the energy infrastructure of its satellite network. The post compared three generations of Starlink satellites:
- Gen1 – about 10 MW of solar generation on about 3,000 satellites;
- Gen2 – about 100 MW on a constellation of 7k satellites;
- Gen3 – a target of about 1,000 MW.
For comparison, 1000 MW is comparable to the capacity of a large nuclear power plant or the power consumption of a large data center cluster.
According to Musk, “the trend of tenfold growth in space solar capacity will continue for many years to come.”
We are talking about the total capacity of solar panels placed on Starlink satellites. Each new generation of vehicles gets larger solar arrays and increased energy efficiency.
“By-product” becomes the main product
The main advantage of solar generation in low Earth orbit is the almost continuous exposure to sunlight. Unlike ground-based power plants, satellites are not dependent on cloud cover, time of day or weather conditions.
This makes it possible to ensure stable power supply for satellite infrastructure, communication systems and promising orbital computing platforms.
Against this background, in recent months the possibility of creating large computing clusters in space for artificial intelligence and data processing has been increasingly discussed in the technological environment. Orbital power scaling can become one of the basic infrastructures for such projects.
Space economy
Musk’s announcement shows that SpaceX sees Starlink not only as a telecommunications network, but also as the basis for a larger space infrastructure.
Growing the number of satellites automatically turns the orbital constellation into one of the largest distributed energy complexes outside of Earth. If the pace continues, we could be talking about gigawatts of generation in space.
For the market, this means further growth in demand for satellite platforms, space-based solar technologies, orbital data centers, high-efficiency solar panels and energy storage and distribution systems.
This intensifies competition around the future economy of Earth orbit, where the interests of telecommunications companies, the AI industry and the aerospace sector intersect.
