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arXiv · 2604.07760

Reduced-Mass Orbital AI Inference via Integrated Solar, Compute, and Radiator Panels

Stephen Gaalema·Samuel Indyk·Clinton Staley
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Abstract

We describe and analyze a distributed compute architecture for SSO computational satellites that can potentially provide >100 kW compute power per launched metric ton (including deployment and station keeping mass). The architecture co-locates and integrates the solar cells, radiator, and compute functions into multiple small panels arranged in a large array. The resultant large vapor chamber radiator area per panel should permit ICs to operate at junction temperatures near 40*C with benefits in compute efficiency and reliability. Using the structure of the radiator to support the solar cells may also yield a specific power of about 500 W/kg compared to less than 100 for existing conventional implementations. Assuming development of custom solutions for all components, a 16 MW computation, 150 ton satellite comprising a 20 m x 2200 m grid of 16,000 panels can fit in a single Starship hold. The concept is scalable to much larger satellites with higher mass payloads or using on-orbit assembly. We consider panel sizes from 1 to 4 m2 to allow trading vapor chamber heat transport with compute efficiency and inter-panel communication. Assuming a 1 kW/panel design, 512-panel subarrays of the satellite can run a representative inference-only LLM with 500,000 token context window and 128 attention blocks, at a rate of 553 tokens/sec/session, across 256 simultaneous in-flight sessions. A full satellite could support 31 such subarrays, for >7900 inferences at a time.

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Stephen Gaalema, Samuel Indyk, Clinton Staley. 2026-04-09. Reduced-Mass Orbital AI Inference via Integrated Solar, Compute, and Radiator Panels. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07760

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