When Bitcoin Miners Take to Space

Interestingly, in February 2026, SpaceX suddenly acquired another AI company under Musk’s umbrella, xAI, and incorporated “orbital data centers” into its core strategy: leveraging the vacuum of space for cooling, utilizing continuous solar power, and sending AI computing power to 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 humanity’s first-ever training and inference of a large AI model in space.

As SpaceX sends AI computing power into space, many have begun to ponder: since Bitcoin mining also relies on computing chips and can utilize solar power, could it also be relocated to space? However, this question is far more complex than most imagine.

A Satellite, a Solar Panel, a Miner

Mining is a competitive mathematical computation. Millions of mining machines worldwide operate simultaneously, vying to be the fastest to solve a specific hash value, with the winner receiving the Bitcoin reward for the current block. This process is known as Proof of Work, and its cost is massive amounts 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. A miner’s profit margin is largely determined by electricity costs; once electricity prices rise, the profit margin shrinks.

The endless sunlight in space directly addresses Bitcoin mining’s core cost variable: electricity.

In Earth’s orbit, solar radiation intensity is about 1,380 watts per square meter, six times the average ground level, and is unaffected by clouds, day/night cycles, or seasons. In specific geosynchronous orbits, satellites can receive near-continuous sunlight and generate power constantly. Attaching a miner to the back of a solar panel and sending it into orbit to mine forever is the fundamental logic behind space mining.

In December 2024, Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd published a technical analysis that moved this idea from concept to an engineering blueprint. He proposed the concept of the “slab miner”: installing ASIC chips directly onto the back of a solar panel, with the front facing the sun to generate power and the chips on the back consuming that power for mining, with the entire structure radiating waste heat in both directions.

Space cooling is a counterintuitive challenge. On Earth, chip heat can be dissipated via air convection; but in the vacuum of space, with no air, heat can only be expelled via radiation. Todd’s calculations show that without additional cooling devices, this structure’s thermal equilibrium temperature in orbit would be about 59°C, well within the normal operating range of the chips. If that temperature is deemed too high, simply tilting the entire panel slightly relative to the sun to reduce the illuminated area can further improve cooling.

Communication is also surprisingly simple. The communication between a miner and a mining pool essentially involves receiving new block headers and submitting computational results, generating about 10MB of data per day—less than the data consumed by streaming a single song. Communication latency in Low Earth Orbit (500-1000 km altitude) ranges from 4 to 30 milliseconds, resulting in a stale block probability (submitting outdated results) of less than 0.01%, which is on par with most ground-based miners and presents no substantive difference. In fact, Blockstream began broadcasting the complete Bitcoin blockchain globally via geosynchronous satellites as early as 2017, proving that the combination of satellites and blockchain was never an unsolved problem.

So, if it’s physically feasible and the engineering framework works, why isn’t it widespread? The reason is the high cost of rocket transportation.

The Economics Don’t Add Up

The current cost to send cargo to Low Earth Orbit using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket is approximately $2,720 per kilogram.

Peter Todd estimates that a complete 20-kilowatt space mining system, encompassing solar panels, thermal radiators, ASIC chip arrays, structural supports, and communication modules, would weigh between 1,600 and 2,200 kilograms. At current prices, the launch cost alone would be between $4.3 million and $6 million.

How much hashrate could this system contribute daily, and how many coins could it mine? Researcher Nick Moran provided the answer: daily revenue of about $92.7, equating to roughly $34,000 annually. 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 costs need to decrease by another factor of 13.

SpaceX’s Starship is widely considered the key to achieving this leap. The fully reusable Starship could theoretically push launch costs below $100 per kilogram or even lower, which is also one of the foundational assumptions for the viability of space data centers in SpaceX’s current IPO vision. However, when and if this cost curve will materialize remains an open question.

Another challenge is Bitcoin mining’s automatic global difficulty adjustment. The Bitcoin protocol calculates the total network hashrate every two weeks and automatically adjusts the mining difficulty to maintain an average block time of about 10 minutes. In other words, if a large number of space miners enter the market and significantly increase the total network hashrate, the mining difficulty will rise accordingly, compressing profits for all miners, including those in orbit.

There’s Always Someone 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, its backers include NFX, Y Combinator, a16z, Sequoia Capital’s angel fund, and Nvidia, with total funding of approximately $200 million. The company’s CTO previously worked at Airbus Defence and Space for a decade, and the lead engineer was formerly responsible for the Starlink project at SpaceX.

In November 2025, Starcloud successfully launched 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 back to Earth. In March 2026, Starcloud announced that its second satellite would carry both Bitcoin ASIC chips and Nvidia’s latest-generation Blackwell GPU, with the goal of becoming the first organization to mine a Bitcoin in space. Furthermore, 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 infrastructure in orbit.

SpaceChain is an OG player in this field, co-founded by former Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik and Zhong Zheng. Since 2017, SpaceChain has launched at least seven blockchain payloads to satellites and the International Space Station. In June 2020, Garzik completed humanity’s first Bitcoin transaction in space from an altitude of 400 kilometers, transferring 0.0099 BTC using SpaceChain’s multi-signature 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 криптовалютаgraphy services. In 2023, Cryptosat participated in Ethereum’s largest-ever trusted setup ceremony (KZG Ceremony), generating part of the random parameters via an orbital node, ensuring from an institutional level that these parameters could not be controlled by any single ground-based entity. It explores another possibility for space-based blockchain: not mining, but making the entire crypto-economic system more resistant to attack.

From Orbit to Рынок: 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 substantial cost reduction potential it represents still holds great attraction and imaginative appeal for the industry. This also reflects the structural cost pressures the entire industry is facing.

After the 2024 halving, the total network hashrate and difficulty have continued to hit record highs, with energy costs accounting for 70% to 90% of total operating expenses. In this context, whoever can secure clean electricity at the lowest, most stable cost has the deepest moat. Hydro, 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 industry 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 become scarce due to competitive demand, then go to where energy is most abundant—the cosmos.

Of course, if the Starcloud-2 satellite successfully mines its first Bitcoin in 2026, its contribution to the global total hashrate exceeding 900 exahashes per second (EH/s) would be like a grain of sand falling into the ocean. But symbolic significance itself is powerful. Just like that 0.0099 BTC space transaction in 2020, its value lies not in the amount but in proving that such a thing is achievable.

From SpaceX’s IPO narrative to Nvidia’s orbital computing power layout, to Starcloud’s ASIC satellite plans, an outline is emerging: the cosmos is becoming the competitive arena for the next generation of computing infrastructure. AI computing power is leading the charge, and Bitcoin computing power is following closely behind.

One day, the global digital network connecting every corner of the Earth, as described in Satoshi Nakamoto’s whitepaper, could also break free from Earth’s bounds, floating in the universe, seeking new opportunities.

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