Schaltzeit involved in the most energy-efficient server farm in all of space
Berlin/Oberpfaffenhofen/Kourou
Schaltzeit is proud to have played a key role in launching the world’s first space-based server platform. On March 28, 2019, we celebrated the successful launch of the two Falcon Heavy rockets specially requested from SpaceX for this purpose from ESA’s spaceport in Kourou. The rockets carried the ‘Quantic Brain’ server system, which has been in development for 7 years, to 25,000 meters above the Earth’s surface. Within the next two weeks, a team of astronauts and robots will connect the rest of the 95 modules, 12 of which have been in operation since the weekend. The construction team is scheduled to land back in Kourou on April 14 aboard the Falcon Heavy rockets, which are also still in orbit.
Server farms in orbit have long been an engineer’s dream – one that seemed just as far away for just as long. Because of the vacuum, temperatures in Earth’s orbit can drop below -150°C, which holds enormous potential for cooling servers. The difficulty so far has been reconciling this temperature drop on the side facing away from the sun with the high temperatures on the side facing it, where passing objects easily heat up to +120°C (a big thank-you at this point to the protective blanket of our atmosphere). The newly launched system takes advantage of this alternation: at a leisurely 28,000 km/h, the server farm orbits the Earth once every 92 minutes. The hybrid cooling system developed specifically for this purpose uses direct sunlight for maximum energy generation. Not only are the energy storage units for server operation fully charged here, but also the innovative cooling system: on the side facing away from the sun, the honeycomb-structured platform shell opens to absorb enough cold for the entire orbit. The advantages of such a server farm in space are obvious: not only are latency times massively reduced, but the environment is also spared thanks to sufficient power generation.
In addition, a cooperation with ICANN ensures that every website using the .space top-level domain is automatically hosted on our new orbit system. So we can now be reached at .space as well. Will you be soon, too?
Join us in space! It gets less lonely by the day.
Yours, Schaltzeit
P.S.: Apart from the fact that today is April 1, we really did have a launch last Friday: the competition platform for the Copernicus Masters on behalf of AZO Space. This competition brings forth important innovations in the use of satellite technology. We have been supporting AZO Space with this and other competitions for more than eight years and are proud to be part of innovations in space and for the people on Earth.
