It really doesn't. You're purely relying on radiation fins to carry heat away, which are incredibly inefficient.
> The radiator surface area problem also scales uncomfortably. At 838 watts per square meter, rejecting 1 megawatt of waste heat requires roughly 1,200 square meters of radiator. Deploying that much surface area on a satellite is a structural engineering challenge that gets harder with every order of magnitude. The ISS solar arrays span about 2,500 square meters total.
So even a 2MW data centre in space requires a cooling array rivalling the international space station.
Starcloud launched a single H100 in November and they were unable to run it 24/7 due to heat buildup.
Even with novel solutions to make heat transfer to the fins more efficient, like phase-change liquids, the limiting factor is that the vacuum of space is a tremendous insulator.
> The radiator surface area problem also scales uncomfortably. At 838 watts per square meter, rejecting 1 megawatt of waste heat requires roughly 1,200 square meters of radiator. Deploying that much surface area on a satellite is a structural engineering challenge that gets harder with every order of magnitude. The ISS solar arrays span about 2,500 square meters total.
So even a 2MW data centre in space requires a cooling array rivalling the international space station. Starcloud launched a single H100 in November and they were unable to run it 24/7 due to heat buildup.
Even with novel solutions to make heat transfer to the fins more efficient, like phase-change liquids, the limiting factor is that the vacuum of space is a tremendous insulator.
https://thecoolingreport.com/intel/starcloud-orbital-data-ce...
https://satnews.com/2026/03/17/the-physics-wall-orbiting-dat...