Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emissions and Data sovereignty

Project Information

ASCEND

Grant agreement ID: 101082517

DOI

10.3030/101082517

Project closed

EC signature date 18 October 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 30 April 2024

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 2 047 882,50

EU contribution

€ 2 047 882,00

Coordinated by

THALES ALENIA SPACE FRANCE SAS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ASCEND (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emissions and Data sovereignty)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ASCEND feasibility study purpose has been to analyse the technical feasibility and the environmental and economical benefits to send data centers in space.

Data Center needs are growing a lot with the new use of AI and working at home, and with this increased needs come increase of energy consumption and so environmental footprint of the digital sector.

ASCEND obectives was to review the projection for data centers needs and associated foreseen environmental footprint, then to define space architecture that could cover some data centers use cases and to analyse the benefits in term of energy consumption reduction and environmental footprint.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The study has been split in 4 mains work packages.

First work package was dedicated to the review of European data centers needs and context, as for the requested computing and storage capacity and the associated energy consumption. With projection up to 2050.
These activities has been performed and several deliverables have been provided, showing that Data Center could represent up to 10% of the EU electricity consumption, CO2 emmission and water consumption by 2050.

Second work package has allowed to perform technical trade-offs for defining the best envisaged solution to deploy data centers in space. A Minimum Viable Product of 10MW has been defined and an objective of 1GW deployed in 2050 has been set.
Preliminary architecture has been defined and presented in the associated work package deliverable.

Third work package was focused on the consolidation of the system architecture and the refinement of technical details. With the definition of the new European Super Heavy Lift Vehicle requested to deploy the large space infrastructure, but also the innovative and ingenious space infrastructure architecture allowing a mass reduction and an optimised system repartition. In-orbit deployment and assembly has been refined and a robotic concept has been defined. Communication means within space data centers and between space assets and ground has been reviewed and a communication architecture has been defined.

Last work package has concluded the study with the analysis of environmental figures and comparison between terrestrial data center and space data center based on the defined architecture, and on the business plan definition in order to check space data centers concept viability.
These analysis have shown that space data centers can be considered as a promising alternative to terrestrial assets.
Development plan and growth potential analysis has been performed to identify the technology gaps and the envisaged evolution for space data centers.

All performed analysis as shown encouraging results that need to be consolidated in further studies.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Space data centers would require an evolution of the European space industry with high ramp-up capacity for launch and space module manufacturing. But this seems feasible.

Space data centers are requesting further analysis on space compatibility of IT hardware component in order to offer the same level of services that on-ground assets.

Thereforme complementary studies are requested in order to refine the technical definition of space data centers and also to consolidate the business and development plan for such promising mission, and to access a potential market of tens of billions of euros.

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