Starcloud is preparing to launch a satellite designed to mine Bitcoin in low-Earth orbit later in 2026 as part of its plan to build space-based computing infrastructure.
The Redmond-based startup previously demonstrated its orbital data-centre concept in November 2025 when its Starcloud-1 satellite carried Nvidia H100 processors into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The upcoming Starcloud-2 mission will include a larger GPU cluster alongside specialised application-specific integrated circuit hardware designed for Bitcoin mining.
“There’s also bitcoin mining… We’ll have some bitcoin mining ASICs on the second spacecraft launching later this year,”
Said Starcloud chief executive, Philip Johnston.
The company believes satellites positioned in sun-synchronous orbit can harness nearly continuous solar energy while using the vacuum of space as a natural cooling system for high-performance computing hardware.
Starcloud has also filed documents with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval for a constellation of up to 88,000 satellites as part of a long-term plan to build a five-gigawatt orbital data centre.
The initiative reflects growing interest in orbital computing infrastructure as falling launch costs and advances in space technology open the possibility of running artificial intelligence workloads and energy-intensive crypto operations in space.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $67,422.08.