According to multiple media reports, Musk's space exploration company SpaceX will soon submit an IPO prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and an expected financing scale exceeding $75 billion. If successful, this would be the largest IPO in human history, far surpassing the record of $29.4 billion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, and it will also be the most watched IPO this year.
Interestingly, in February 2026, SpaceX suddenly acquired xAI, another AI company under Musk, and incorporated the "Orbital Data Center" into its core strategy: utilizing the vacuum of space for heat dissipation and continuous solar power supply to send AI computing power into low Earth orbit. Musk believes that, in the long run, space-based AI is the only way to achieve scalable development.
At the same time, NVIDIA is also actively exploring this direction. It has invested in the orbital data center startup Starcloud, which successfully sent an NVIDIA H100 GPU into orbit in November 2025, completing the first-ever training and inference of an AI large language model in space.
As SpaceX sends AI computing power into space, many are also beginning to wonder: since Bitcoin mining also relies on computing chips and can utilize solar power, could it also be moved to space? However, this issue is far more complex than most people imagine.
A Satellite, a Solar Panel, a Miner
Mining is a competitive mathematical calculation. Millions of miners worldwide operate simultaneously, competing to be the first to solve a specific hash value, with the successful one receiving the Bitcoin reward for the current block. This process is called Proof of Work, and its cost is a massive amount of electricity. The continuous power consumption of the global Bitcoin network is approximately 20 gigawatts, equivalent to the total industrial electricity consumption of a medium-sized country. Miners' profit margins are largely determined by electricity prices; once electricity prices rise, profit margins are compressed.
The endless sunlight in space directly addresses the core cost variable of Bitcoin mining: electricity.
In Earth's orbit, solar radiation intensity is about 1,380 watts per square meter, six times the average level on the ground, and is unaffected by clouds, day/night cycles, or seasons. In specific geosynchronous orbits, satellites can receive near-continuous sunlight and generate power persistently. Attaching a miner to the back of a solar panel and sending it into orbit to mine forever is the underlying logic of space mining.
Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd published a technical analysis in December 2024, pushing this idea from concept to an engineering blueprint. He proposed the concept of a "flat-panel miner": installing ASIC chips directly on the back of a solar panel, with the front facing the sun to generate power and the chips on the back consuming electricity to mine, with the entire structure radiating waste heat in both directions.
Space heat dissipation is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, chip heat can be carried away by air convection; but in the vacuum of space, with no air, heat can only be dissipated through radiation. Todd's calculations show that, without additional cooling devices, the thermal equilibrium temperature of this structure in orbit is about 59°C, well within the normal operating range of the chips. If the temperature is considered too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly relative to the sun to reduce the illuminated area can further improve heat dissipation.
Communication is surprisingly simple as well. The communication between miners and mining pools essentially involves receiving new block headers and submitting computation results, generating about 10MB of data per day, less than the data consumed by streaming a single song. Communication latency in low Earth orbit (500 to 1,000 km above Earth) ranges from 4 to 30 milliseconds, resulting in a stale block rate (i.e., submitting outdated computation results) of less than 0.01%, on par with the vast majority of ground-based miners, with no substantial difference. In fact, Blockstream began using geosynchronous satellites to broadcast the entire Bitcoin blockchain globally as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain has never been an unsolved problem.
So, if it's physically feasible and the engineering framework is viable, why isn't it widespread? The reason is the high cost of rocket transportation.
The Uneconomical Math
Using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to send cargo to low Earth orbit currently costs about $2,720 per kilogram.
Peter Todd estimated that a complete 20-kilowatt space mining system, including solar panels, heat radiators, ASIC chip arrays, structural supports, and communication modules, weighs about 1,600 to 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, the launch cost alone would be as high as $4.3 million to $6 million.
How much computing power can this system contribute daily, and how many coins can it mine? Researcher Nick Moran provided the answer: daily revenue is about $92.7, equivalent to roughly $34,000 per year. The payback period exceeds 100 years.
Starcloud's CEO Philip Johnston calculated that launch costs must drop below $200 per kilogram for space mining to have basic commercial logic. This means the cost needs to decrease by another 13.
SpaceX's Starship is widely considered the key to achieving this leap. The fully reusable Starship could theoretically reduce the launch cost per kilogram to below $100 or even lower, which is one of the underlying assumptions for the viability of the orbital data center in SpaceX's current IPO vision. However, when this cost curve will materialize, and whether it will, remains an open variable.
Another challenge is the automatic adjustment of Bitcoin's network-wide mining difficulty. The Bitcoin protocol calculates the total network hash rate every two weeks and automatically adjusts the mining difficulty to maintain a block time of approximately 10 minutes. In other words, if a large number of space miners enter the market and the total network hash rate increases significantly, the mining difficulty will rise accordingly, synchronously compressing the profits of all miners, including those in orbit.
Some Are Always Busy Searching for Treasure
Despite this, a number of startups are actively pushing forward with this endeavor.
Starcloud, formerly Lumen Orbit, is currently the company closest to actual implementation and the most important case study in the entire field. Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, it is backed by NFX, Y Combinator, a16z's angel fund, Sequoia Capital's angel fund, and NVIDIA. Total funding is approximately $200 million. The company's CTO worked at Airbus Defense and Space for ten years, and the lead engineer previously worked on the Starlink project at SpaceX.
In November 2025, Starcloud successfully sent its first satellite, carrying an NVIDIA H100 GPU, into orbit, ran Google's Gemma language model in space, and sent the first-ever message generated by AI in orbit to Earth. In March 2026, Starcloud announced that its second satellite would carry both Bitcoin ASIC chips and NVIDIA's latest-generation Blackwell GPU, aiming to become the first organization to mine a Bitcoin in space. Additionally, the company has applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a constellation plan deploying up to 88,000 satellites, with a long-term vision of building a total of 5 gigawatts of computing power infrastructure in orbit.
SpaceChain is an OG player in this field, co-founded by former Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik and Zheng Zhong. Since 2017, SpaceChain has launched at least seven blockchain payloads to satellites and the International Space Station. In June 2020, Garzik completed the first-ever Bitcoin transaction in space from an orbit 400 km above Earth, for an amount of 0.0099 BTC, using SpaceChain's multisignature wallet node installed on the space station. SpaceChain's core focus is on orbital secure nodes for blockchain transactions, not active mining: locking private keys in space where no hacker or government on Earth can physically access them.
Cryptosat, founded by two Stanford PhDs, currently operates three satellites in orbit, primarily providing tamper-resistant orbital cryptography services. In 2023, Cryptosat participated in the largest trusted setup ceremony in Ethereum's history (KZG Ceremony), generating partial random number parameters through orbital nodes, institutionally ensuring that these parameters could not be controlled by any single ground-based entity. It explores another possibility for space blockchain: not mining, but making the entire crypto-economic system more resistant to attack.
From Orbit to Market: What This Means for the Mining Industry
For currently operating Bitcoin mining companies, space mining does not pose an immediate competitive threat in the short term. However, the fact that numerous startups continue to attempt it indicates that the significant cost reduction potential it represents still holds great attraction and imaginative space for the industry. This also reflects, from a side perspective, the structural cost pressures facing the entire industry.
After the 2024 halving, the network-wide hash rate and difficulty continue to hit record highs, with energy costs accounting for 70% to 90% of total operating expenses. In this context, whoever can obtain clean electricity at the lowest cost and most stably has the deepest moat. Hydroelectric, wind, and associated natural gas resources in the United States, the Middle East, and Africa are becoming the core drivers of a new wave of mining mergers, acquisitions, and site selection.
The logic of space mining is an ultimate extrapolation of this trend: if cheap electricity on the ground will eventually narrow due to competitive demand, then go to where energy is most abundant—the cosmos.
Of course, if the Starcloud-2 satellite manages to mine the first Bitcoin in 2026, it would be equivalent to a grain of sand falling into the ocean compared to the global total hash rate of over 900 exahashes per second (EH/s). But symbolic significance itself has penetrating power. Just like that 0.0099 BTC space transaction in 2020, its value lies not in the amount but in proving that it can be done.
From SpaceX's IPO narrative to NVIDIA's orbital computing power布局, to Starcloud's ASIC satellite plan, an outline is emerging: the cosmos is becoming the competitive arena for the next generation of computing infrastructure. AI computing power led the way, and Bitcoin computing power is following closely behind.
On that day, the global digital network connecting every corner of the Earth, as described in Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper, could also break free from Earth and float in the universe, seeking new opportunities.
