SpaceX has provided some details about its AI1 satellite, which it calls an orbital data center.

The company provided updates about the size and power capacity of the system, ahead of a much-anticipated IPO this Friday.

"First, you've got to make something compelling, and we thought that the right place is around the 150kW peak power level," Ian Dahl, director of satellite engineering, said in a promotional video ahead of the IPO.

"But as we start to look at workloads with our experience with xAI, we get to actually see that we can support 120kW of average compute."

Founder and CEO Elon Musk added: “What we’re showing here is kind of a draft version of Version One of the SpaceX AI satellite, AI1. Seems like a reasonable place to start is 150kW peak, 120kW sustained.

"The assumptions here are 250W per sq m for the solar array, and about 1,400W per sqm for the radiators. The radiators are radiating both sides, orientated knife-edge to the sun. Over time, we think we can do about 250W and 1,400W, respectively."

The satellite is expected to have a wingspan of 70 meters, and a deployed height of 20 meters. It will have a 110 sqm deployable liquid radiator, with redundant pumping loops. More details about the cooling system were not shared.

Solar arrays are expected to be developed in-house at the company's plant in Bastrop, Texas.

"There's not some magic that doesn't exist; a lot of this is technology we've already made with the Starlink V3 satellites," Musk said.

"The AI satellite is much simpler than a Starlink satellite. The AI satellite is essentially a lot of solar cells, you still need some laser links, but you don't have all of the super complex antennas that you have on a Starlink satellite. The easier one to design for is the AI satellite."

SpaceX has filed plans to launch up to one million satellites as a data center megaconstellation, although critics have doubted the feasibility of the effort.

The company plans to lease compute from the satellites, as it has with its terrestrial data centers, with major deals with Anthropic and Google.