Robert Rosenberg and William Tanebaum authored an article titled, "Legal Issues for Data Professionals: Data Centers in Space, which appeared in The Data Administration Newsletter.

Artificial intelligence companies are exploring locating their data centers on satellites.

Satellites address many of the constraints on terrestrial data centers generated by the demands of AI. Sunlight provides power, the cold temperature provides cooling, and the location in orbit avoids land-use restrictions. This is not just the topic of keynote speeches, IT and defense-tech companies are already researching or prototyping systems that would train and run AI models in orbit.

Whether these projects succeed or not, the legal issues they raise are not hypothetical. They create bona fide questions for contract drafting, licensing, enforcement, data governance, and compliance. Now is the appropriate time for companies and their data professionals and legal counsel to identify and plan for the risks. One goal should be to update their legal frameworks before the first commercially viable “data centers in the sky” come online.

This article outlines the key issues we are thinking about as the line between Earth-based and orbital data center computing begins to blur, and space-based infrastructures challenge legal infrastructures and data governance.