Caltech and Sophia Space patent solar powered computing tiles for orbit

In short: Caltech and startup Sophia Space have received a new US patent for a space based computer design that runs on solar power and cools itself without fans or liquid coolant.

What happened

Caltech researchers and Sophia Space co developed a design for “space based data centers,” meaning large groups of computers that could operate in orbit. The U.S. Patent No. 12,679,564, titled “Space-Based Data Centers,” was issued on July 14, 2026 and is jointly owned by Caltech and Sophia Space.

The basic building block is a modular “TILE,” a thin 1 meter by 1 meter panel that acts like a small server (a computer built to process and store lots of data). One side has solar cells to make electricity from sunlight. The other side holds computing and storage hardware, such as Nvidia Jetson Orin chips.

The key idea is how it handles heat. Instead of using fans or pumps, each TILE uses a passive thermal stack that spreads heat and then releases it as infrared radiation into deep space. You can think of it like a warm plate that cools down by shining its heat outward, except the “outside” is the cold of space.

Sophia Space says this approach could let about 92% of collected solar energy go to computing, because less power is spent on cooling. The tiles are meant to connect into larger surfaces in sun synchronous low Earth orbit, where they can stay in sunlight for long periods.

Why it matters

Modern AI systems need lots of computing power, and that creates heat. If more processing can happen in orbit, satellites may be able to analyze data up there and send down only the results, which can save time and reduce how much data must be transmitted to Earth.

Source: NYTimes