Orbital Data Centers: Power and Thermal Management for Scalable Architectures

As orbital data centers move from concept to reality, scalable power generation and efficient thermal management are emerging as critical enabling technologies.

A new whitepaper from Redwire examines how power generation and distribution, along with thermal rejection, will fundamentally shape the future of large-scale orbital compute infrastructure.

Drawing on decades of Redwire spaceflight heritage in deployable structures, high-power solar arrays, and thermal management systems, the whitepaper highlights how existing flight-proven technologies can support practical and scalable orbital compute architectures. 

Redwire frames orbital data centers as integrated systems, where power generation, electrical distribution, compute performance, and thermal management must be designed together from the start. Redwire also explores how system-level constraints become key architectural drivers as orbital compute platforms grow in scale. Rather than treating these challenges as barriers, the whitepaper demonstrates how modular architectures and deployable thermal systems can enable scalable orbital computing using technologies already in development or flight today.

In addition, Redwire presents a representative near-term orbital compute node concept built around the company’s flight-proven Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA) architecture and deployable radiator technologies, illustrating how current-generation space systems can support data center-class compute capabilities in orbit.