Commercial space station outfit plans two Orbital Data Center nodes by the end of 2025

Yep. It's Axiom's datacenters in SPAAAAACE

Axiom Space says it is planning to launch a pair of Orbital Data Center (ODC) nodes to low Earth orbit by the end of 2025.

The company, which also has plans for a commercial space station and uses SpaceX capsules to launch crewed missions, made the announcement this week in Colorado Springs, at the National Space Symposium.

The nodes, which will be part of the Kepler Communications optical relay network, will be able to operate independently of terrestrial infrastructure and, as with other "smart" satellites, feature onboard compute and storage capabilities.

Sending datacenters to the final frontier is not new. In 2022 Lonestar, for example, was talking up ambitious plans to use datacenters in Lunar lava tubes as long-term data storage.

According to Axiom, "ODCs will provide secure, scalable, and cloud-enabled data storage and processing, and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) solutions directly to satellites, constellations, and other spacecraft in Earth's orbit."

Jason Aspiotis, global director of in-space data and security at Axiom Space, said, "We have been developing ODC capabilities since 2022 with the launch of an AWS Snowcone to the International Space Station (ISS), followed by an array of demonstrations in Earth-independent cloud solutions from the station."

Its latest demonstration, AxDCU-1, a Red Hat-powered device to be sent to the ISS, was announced in March 2025 for launch at some point during Spring 2025. Spring ends in June, so time is marching on for the device, with its launch likely not helped by damage to the NG-22 Cygnus cargo freighter, the indefinite delay of which has resulted in payloads being removed from April's SpaceX Dragon cargo manifest in favor of crew consumables.

In 2023, Axiom Space announced plans to demonstrate high data rate optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) on the first module of the company's commercial space station. However, the launch dates for the space station's modules are subject to delay, as is the case with most things in the space sector. At the end of 2024, Axiom Space shuffled the assembly sequence of its station to have the Payload Power Thermal Module (AxPPTM) launch first, followed by the habitat module to remove ISS dependency as soon as possible.

As for Kepler, it plans to launch its first tranche of optical relay satellites in Q4 2025. According to Kepler, Axiom Space "has entered into a strategic collaboration" to purchase two initial on-orbit computing payloads.

The ODC nodes will feature 2.5Gbps-capable optical links to other assets in the Kepler Communications optical constellation in low-Earth-orbit as well as other spacecraft compliant with the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 1 optical communications standards.

Aspiotis said, "Free-space optical communications have come a long way in the past few years, with significant investments by commercial entities, the Department of Defense, and NASA in advancing OISL capabilities.

"We plan to integrate emerging 10Gbps+ OISL and space-to-ground optical communications capabilities into our future ODC nodes, as they become available to facilitate connections to more satellites, more constellations, more ground sites, and ultimately Tbps-worth of data flow in the foreseeable future." ®