A European initiative to investigate the feasibility of data centers in space has found that the project could be economically viable while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint of the infrastructure driving the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom.

Thales Alenia Space, the coordinator of the European project, announced on Thursday that the feasibility study confirmed that the use of data centers in space could be a more sustainable solution for hosting and processing data. The project could also generate a return on investment of several billion euros by 2050, according to the company.

Data centers provide the computing power required by AI models but also consume significant amounts of energy and water. The rise of ChatGPT and similar AI applications has triggered a race among technology companies to build more data centers, raising concerns about potential environmental impacts.

The study, named Ascend, short for Advanced Space Cloud for European Net Zero Emission and Data Sovereignty, was funded by the European Union and compared the environmental impacts of space-based and earth-based data centers, the company explained. Going forward, the company plans to consolidate and optimize its findings.

Space data centers would be operated outside the Earth's atmosphere using solar energy to contribute to the European Union's goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, the project coordinator explained.

The results of the Ascend study confirm that the deployment of data centers in space could transform the European digital landscape and offer a more environmentally friendly and sovereign solution for hosting and processing data," said Christophe Valorge, Chief Technical Officer of Thales Alenia.

According to the International Energy Agency, in 2020 data centers and data transmission networks accounted for about 0.9% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions or 0.6% of total emissions.

Thales Alenia, a joint venture of the aerospace and defense companies Thales from France and Leonardo from Italy, collaborated with partners such as the aerospace company Airbus, the server and cloud software company Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and the telecommunications group Orange on the study. It was found that space data centers would require the development of a launch vehicle that produces ten times fewer emissions throughout its lifecycle in order to significantly reduce the CO₂ emissions generated by the processing and storage of digital data.

Space data centers would not need water for cooling, the company stated.