AI and IP: Sophia Space and Caltech secure patent for orbital data centers that use artificial cooling
Sophia Space has received a patent for technology that could pave the way for solar-powered orbital data centers that extract excess heat from space.
Developed in collaboration with Caltech, Sophia’s architecture tackles a major hurdle in orbital computing: how to cool the thousands of chips that run artificial intelligence systems in space.
Conventional designs rely on extensive satellite radiator systems with heat pumps and circulating fluids. In contrast, Sophia plans to build flat, 4-inch-square tiles equipped with four processors each. The tiles draw energy from solar cells on their sunlit side, and dump heat into the cold space on their dark side.
This method avoids installing a cooling system in the central bus of all the satellites, said Leon Alkalai, Sophia Space’s founder, chairman and chief technology officer. “I think in the long run you’ll find that our approach is more attractive when we get to big water systems, because bringing everything on a bus can only be done up to a certain point, and then it’s almost impossible,” he told GeekWire. “Our advantage is really scalability.”
An added benefit of the satellite design is that each tile is powered independently. “The connection between the tiles has fiber optic connectors,” said Alkalai. “Only data is shared. No power, no hot lines, no copper wires. Only fiber optic links.”
Alkalai and his team came up with the perfect acronym for the modules design: TILE, which stands for Thermal Integrated LEO Edge. (LEO stands for “low Earth orbit.”)
How it all started
Alkalai founded Sophia Space after completing a 32-year career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and transitioning to the world of space launch in 2021. The company is headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., but also has corporate connections in Seattle. This week, Alkalai was one of the featured speakers for Seattle Tech Week.
The TILE approach to orbital electronics grew out of a Caltech research project originally focused on space solar energy systems.
“That was before 2022, when ChatGPT was announced,” Alkalai said. “Once that happened, within a year, all hell broke loose in the data center world, saying we needed a thousand times more power to power AI — and our reason for being just got bigger.”
Putting data centers into orbit will address some of the problems associated with terrestrial data centers – for example, increased demands for real estate and more drain on power grids. But the cooling problem proved to be a significant obstacle for orbital computing.
Alkalai said the “eureka moment” came when he and his fellow researchers came up with a way to measure the solar energy absorbed by the front of the tile, the power requirements of the processing chips, and the heat emitted from the back. “We did the basic math and said, ‘Oh my God, this could work,'” he recalled.
A patent application for “Space-based Data Centers” was filed in October 2024, and the patent was granted to Sophia Space and Caltech on July 14. In addition to Alkalai, six other team members are listed as inventors: John Brophy, Jonathan Sauder, Timothy McElrath and Douglas Sheldon at JPL; Sergio Pellegrino at Caltech; and Don Hunter, retired from JPL.
In a news release, Brophy said the TILE design was “developed as part of JPL’s mission to address nationally important challenges by leveraging JPL’s unique talent.”
“This is an example of how JPL, Caltech and private industry can work together to rapidly develop solutions to difficult technology problems for the benefit of the nation,” he said.
Where everything goes
Alkalai said his co-founders will share in the fruits of the patent. “They are all involved in Sophia, and they have equity in the company,” he said. “Also with Caltech, we signed a contract to continue doing research with Sergio Pellegrino and his students. …
The development timeline calls for Sophia to fly its first technology demonstrator next year. “We announced our partnership with Apex satellites,” Alkalai said. “We’re using their Nova bus … and that will be the very first technical demo of a tile with four GPUs.”
Alkalai said Sophia Space plans to start selling TILE systems and related equipment to customers in 2028, and begin testing the system’s capabilities with a constellation of four to six stars in the 2029-2030 period.
“That’s going to show the system is ending,” he said. “Then, in this new decade, we can scale up to larger constellation numbers, larger tile numbers, and so on.”
Alkalai said acquiring the newly issued patent is part of Sophia’s plan to build a strong intellectual property portfolio.
“If someone wants to approve or use our TILE and use our strong approach, we can turn that into a business,” he said. “Protecting your IP is not just denial, it’s empowerment. And I see it as the latter. Why would anyone fight it? They can get a license, and we can make this work globally.”
Alkalai said orbital data centers being planned by other companies — for example, SpaceX’s ambitious Starmind network and the satellite constellation envisioned by Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud — do not appear to be designed to take advantage of artificial cooling and thus would not raise questions of Sophia Space’s patent infringement. But he suspects that the TILE architecture will eventually become the standard for orbital data centers.
“I have been in this job for five years, and I feel very happy about this topic, because I think it is useful for humanity,” said Alkalai. “This is not just about money, or about the benefits to me or my team. I just think this is a good direction for humanity as we transition to a space economy.”
