- Starcloud plans to test Bitcoin mining in orbit by launching ASIC mining hardware aboard its upcoming Starcloud-2 satellite.
- The project builds on a 2025 mission that successfully ran Nvidia H100 GPUs in space and demonstrated orbital computing.
- The company believes continuous solar energy and natural cooling in space could reduce costs, though technical hurdles remain.
Starcloud, a space infrastructure startup founded in 2024, is preparing to test whether Bitcoin mining hardware can operate in orbit. The company plans to send specialised mining processors aboard a spacecraft scheduled to launch later in 2026, marking one of the first practical attempts to run crypto infrastructure in space.
The upcoming mission follows an earlier demonstration that showed advanced computing hardware could function beyond Earth. In November 2025, Starcloud launched a satellite carrying Nvidia H100 GPUs into low Earth orbit, becoming the first mission to operate data-centre-grade processors in space. During the test, the spacecraft carried out tasks including training a small language model and running inference using a version of Google Gemini.
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From AI Chips to Bitcoin Mining
The next spacecraft, called Starcloud-2, will expand those capabilities while introducing Bitcoin mining hardware. The satellite is expected to carry both a larger GPU cluster and application-specific integrated circuits designed specifically for the hashing calculations used in Bitcoin mining. Chief executive Philip Johnston has said the company intends to include mining ASICs on the mission and aims to mine Bitcoin in space.
Starcloud argues that orbit offers advantages for energy-intensive computing. Solar arrays on satellites can receive near-continuous sunlight when placed in certain orbits, providing steady power generation compared with ground-based solar systems. The surrounding vacuum also allows heat to dissipate into space through radiators rather than relying on water-heavy cooling systems.
Executives say these factors could reduce both power consumption and cooling costs for computing workloads. Nonetheless, engineers note that operating hardware in space presents challenges such as radiation exposure, shielding requirements and the difficulty of repairing equipment once it has been launched.
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