Navigating The Challenges Of Data Center Growth – Focus Issue: Off World Compute, Earthly Laws: Comments On Service Interruptions, Collision Risk, And Data Processing For Extraterrestrial Data Centers

Foley Hoag is publishing a series of articles on the legal issues confronting the data center industry. Part 1 examined energy usage challenges. Part 2 examined water, community, land use, and e-waste challenges. As part of the series, we're focusing on specific, emerging aspects of the industry. This is the first such focused article. Stay tuned for additional posts as we continue our deep dive into these critical topics.

Key Takeaways:

• Advantages of data centers in space include easy access to plentiful solar energy, efficient cooling, and no land-use constraints.
• While the legal infrastructure applying to satellites is relatively mature, aspects of it have not been tested: it may be extraterrestrial data centers that test them.