Bit Market · Sourced milestones
Signals
Memory and compute in space, as a record of progress: the storage spacecraft and rovers have carried, the radiation tests that show what flash survives, and the computers now flown to the station, to orbit and to the Moon. 31 milestones from 1977 to 2027, each linked to its source.
Earth imagery: NASA Blue Marble and Black Marble
Chart of storage, memory and compute flown in space by year
Storage flown on one machine went from 67MB in 1977 to over 130TB in 2024
Memory flown on one machine went from 0.13GB in 2003 to 2GB in 2021
- Record: the most any one machine had carried in space by then
- Hollow: a plan, not yet flown
- Memory in orbit
- Compute in orbit
6 records, oldest first. Each machine carried more storage into space than any before it.
8/1977
67MB
- Who
- NASA JPL
- Stage
- Flown
1/1994
300MB
- Who
- BMDO and NASA
- Stage
- Flown
2/1997
1.5GB
- Who
- NASA
- Stage
- Flown
8/2005
20GB
- Who
- NASA JPL
- Stage
- Flown
2/2013
393GB
- Who
- NASA and USGS
- Stage
- Flown
3/2024
over 130TB
Case Study: Edge Computing From the Data Center to Space
- Who
- KIOXIA
- Stage
- Flown
3 records, oldest first. Each machine carried more memory into space than any before it.
6/2003
0.13GB
- Who
- NASA JPL
- Stage
- Flown
11/2011
0.25GB
- Who
- NASA JPL
- Stage
- Flown
4/2021
2GB
- Who
- NASA JPL
- Stage
- Flown
How to read it
Each row is a milestone: storage or a computer flown, a radiation test, or a design paper. The page holds 31 milestones from 34 public sources. A row sits at the date its own source prints, to the month at least; an item whose source gives only a year waits until a source dates it. SI clusters on the ground, with their power, GPU counts and storage, are on Racks and Rows.
The chart plots what one deployment carried: one spacecraft, one station payload or one lunar lander. Storage runs from megabytes to terabytes on a log scale, where each gridline step multiplies the value. It climbs from a small satellite’s 30 MB recorder in 1992 to the solid-state drives of a computer on the space station. Memory and compute get their own charts as flown machines publish them. A value marked derived is a unit change, such as gigabits turned into terabytes.
Plans are rows too: Axiom’s node for the space station, due in 2027 with over a petabyte of flash, and the orbital data center filings of SpaceX (up to one million satellites) and Blue Origin (up to 51,600). A plan is drawn hollow and never sets a record; the record moves only when hardware flies.
Radiation tolerance is in the table as TID tested, the total ionizing dose a test reached in krad(Si). The tests on this page reached 10 to 100 krad(Si): flash got far denser, but the dose it survives did not climb with it, which is why a dose chart would show no staircase.
Every milestone and its source
Newest first. The Lane chips above filter this table and the chart together.
- means the source does not state this figure.
- D Derived: worked out from what the source states (a unit change, or one figure divided by another), not printed by it.
Tap any column heading to sort the table by it. Tap it again to reverse the order.
| Milestone | Who | Lane | Stage | Date | Storage | Memory | Compute | Satellites | TID tested | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aethero Titan, an orbital data center on an ESPA-class bus | Aethero | Compute in orbit | Forecast | 2/2027 | not published | not published | ≤16,000TFLOPS | not published | not published | Aethero 2026 release | Planned: up to 16,000 TFLOPS on 3.4 kW peak power. A plan, drawn faint. |
| Axiom Space, Kepler Ready Orbital Computing for Quantum Era | Axiom Space and Kepler | Compute in orbit | Operating | 10/2026 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Axiom Space 2026 release | Axiom runs two compute nodes on Kepler’s optical relay satellites, launched in 2026, and has confirmed links between them and to the ground. |
| Our Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is in orbit. | Compute in orbit | Flown | 10/2026 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Google 2026 release | Built with Planet and launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare, the prototype is in contact and operating; it tests how Google’s TPUs handle launch, radiation and heat in orbit. | |
| 力箭一号“一箭五星”发射成功，国产GPU算力入轨 | Zhejiang Lab and MetaX | Compute in orbit | Flown | 7/2026 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | China Daily 2026 release | A computing satellite with a Chinese-made MetaX GPU payload, launched on Kinetica-1 Y15 with Chenguang-1 and three others. The report gives no compute figure and does not call it a first. |
| Blue Origin requests authority to deploy and operate a constellation of up to 51,600 satellites (Project Sunrise) | Blue Origin | Compute in orbit | Forecast | 3/2026 | not published | not published | not published | ≤51,600 | not published | Federal Communications Commission 2026 | Filed with the FCC on March 19, 2026: satellites working as a data center in space, in sun-synchronous orbits at 500 to 1,800 km. A plan, drawn faint. |
| Kepler Deploys First Space-Based, Scalable Cloud Infrastructure Powered by NVIDIA | Kepler Communications | Compute in orbit | Operating | 3/2026 | not published | not published | not published | 10 | not published | Kepler 2026 release | Kepler switched on computing across its ten optical relay satellites, the first constellation-scale edge computing in a commercially operational optical relay network. It gives no FLOPS figure. |
| Space Bureau Accepts for Filing SpaceX’s Application for Orbital Data Centers | SpaceX | Compute in orbit | Forecast | 1/2026 | not published | not published | not published | ≤1,000,000 | not published | Federal Communications Commission 2026 | Filed with the FCC on January 30, 2026: up to one million satellites working as an orbital data center, at 500 to 2,000 km. A plan, drawn faint. |
| The first two orbital data center nodes successfully launched to low-Earth orbit | Axiom Space | Compute in orbit | Flown | 1/2026 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Axiom Space 2026 release | |
| Exploring a space-based, scalable AI infrastructure system design | Compute in orbit | Paper | 11/2025 | not published | not published | not published | 81 | not published | Google Research 2025 releasearXiv 2025 paper | Project Suncatcher: solar-powered satellites with TPUs and optical links; two prototype satellites with Planet slated by early 2027. | |
| Radiation tolerance of TPUs | Compute in orbit | Lab demo | 11/2025 | not published | not published | not published | not published | 15krad(Si) | Google Research 2025 release | Trillium TPU HBM was the most sensitive part, with irregularities from 2 krad(Si); no hard failures up to the 15 krad(Si) maximum tested. | |
| Starcloud-1 launched in November 2025 with the first Nvidia H100 GPU in space | Starcloud | Compute in orbit | Flown | 11/2025 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Starcloud 2025 release | |
| Axiom Space, Spacebilt Announce Orbital Data Center Node Aboard International Space Station | Axiom Space and Spacebilt | Compute in orbit | Forecast | 9/2025 | ≥1,000TB | not published | not published | not published | not published | Axiom Space 2025 release | Planned for the ISS in 2027: Phison SSDs give it over one petabyte of storage, in what Spacebilt calls the first petabyte-class servers in space. A plan, drawn faint. |
| 我国太空计算卫星星座成功发射 | Zhejiang Lab and ADA Space | Compute in orbit | Flown | 5/2025 | not published | not published | not published | 12 | not published | Xinhua 2025 release | Xinhua: the first 12 satellites of the Three-Body Computing Constellation, launched on one rocket, carrying an 8-billion-parameter model for processing in orbit. |
| Phison and Lonestar Unite to Enable the First Data Center Hardware on the Moon | Phison and Lonestar | Compute in orbit | Flown | 2/2025 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Phison 2025 release | A Phison Pascari enterprise SSD flew on Lonestar’s Freedom payload, launched toward the Moon on February 26, 2025. |
| Aethero Deimos, the first COTS NVIDIA Jetson Orin in orbit | Aethero | Compute in orbit | Flown | 8/2024 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | Aethero 2026 release | Launched on SpaceX Transporter-11, Deimos flew the first space-rated edge computer to reach 100 TOPS. Phobos followed on 2026-03-30 at up to 157 TOPS. Aethero rates both in TOPS, not FLOPS. |
| Case Study: Edge Computing From the Data Center to Space | KIOXIA | Memory in orbit | Flown | 3/2024 | ≥130TB | not published | not published | not published | not published | KIOXIA 2024 release | HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 on the ISS carries sixteen KIOXIA SSDs, over 130TB in all, which KIOXIA calls the most storage on a single ISS mission. |
| New Total-Ionizing-Dose Resistant Data Storing Technique for NAND Flash Memory | University of Alabama in Huntsville | Memory in orbit | Paper | 9/2022 | not published | not published | not published | not published | 100krad(Si) | IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability 2022 paper | Commercial SLC chips irradiated at Sandia up to 100 krad(Si) to test a non-charge way of storing read-only data in flash cells. |
| James Webb Space Telescope | NASA | Memory in orbit | Flown | 12/2021 | 65GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | NASA Science 2026JWST User Documentation 2024 | Webb’s solid state recorder holds about 65 GB of science data between downlinks. |
| Ingenuity Mars Helicopter | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 4/2021 | 32GB, derived | 2GB | not published | not published | not published | NASA Science 2024AIAA 2018 paper | The helicopter flew a Snapdragon 801 phone processor with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of flash, as its design paper describes it. |
| Perseverance Rover Components | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 3/2021 | 2GB, derived | 0.25GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | NASA 2024 | The rover’s computer carries 2 GB of flash and 256 MB of DRAM, the same as Curiosity, on a radiation-hardened design. |
| Layer-Dependent Bit Error Variation in 3-D NAND Flash Under Ionizing Radiation | University of Alabama in Huntsville and Sandia | Memory in orbit | Paper | 9/2020 | not published | not published | not published | not published | 10krad(Si) | IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 2020 paper | MLC 3D NAND irradiated with Co-60 gamma rays to 10 krad(Si); bit errors after the dose varied with the vertical layer of the page. |
| Heavy Ion and Proton-Induced Single Event Upset Characteristics of a 3-D NAND Flash Memory | NASA Goddard (NEPP) | Memory in orbit | Paper | 1/2018 | not published | not published | not published | not published | not published | IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 2018 paper | 3D NAND showed SEU sensitivity like planar NAND of the same density in MLC mode, and much lower susceptibility in SLC mode. |
| A New Approach to Radiation Hardening Computers | HPE and NASA | Compute in orbit | Flown | 8/2017 | not published | not published | ≥1TFLOPS | not published | not published | NASA 2019 | HPE’s commercial supercomputer ran on the space station for 207 days without a reset, with software in place of radiation-hardened parts. |
| Landsat 8 | NASA and USGS | Memory in orbit | Flown | 2/2013 | 393GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | U.S. Geological Survey 2023 | Landsat 8 records its imagery on a 3.14 terabit solid-state data recorder. |
| Mars Science Laboratory Landing | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 11/2011 | 2GB, derived | 0.25GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | NASA / JPL 2012 release | Each of Curiosity’s two redundant computers has 2 GB of flash, about eight times Spirit’s or Opportunity’s, and 256 MB of DRAM. |
| Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 8/2005 | 20GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | NASA 2006 release | The orbiter carries 160 gigabits of solid-state memory for its science data. |
| Mars Exploration Rover Launches | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 6/2003 | 256MB, derived | 0.125GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | NASA 2004 releaseNASA / JPL 2003 release | Each rover’s computer had 128 MB of RAM backed by 256 MB of flash, which keeps data with the power off. |
| Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 2 installs a Solid State Recorder | NASA | Memory in orbit | Flown | 2/1997 | 1.5GB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 1999 | Solid-state memory with no tape and no moving parts replaced a tape recorder on Hubble; it stores 12 gigabits, ten times the tape’s 1.2 gigabits. |
| Clementine | BMDO and NASA | Memory in orbit | Flown | 1/1994 | 300MB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | NASA Science 2017NASA NEPP / JPL 2005 | The lunar mapper kept its data in a 2.4 gigabit solid state recorder built from an array of 4 Mb DRAM chips, not flash. |
| SAMPEX (Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer) | NASA Goddard | Memory in orbit | Flown | 7/1992 | 30MB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | eoPortal 2012 | NASA’s first Small Explorer stored its telemetry in a 30 MByte solid state recorder while out of contact with the ground. |
| Voyager 1 and 2 | NASA JPL | Memory in orbit | Flown | 8/1977 | 67MB, derived | not published | not published | not published | not published | NASA 1977 release | Each Voyager stored its data on a tape recorder: 328 m of half-inch tape in eight tracks, about 536 million bits, or 100 TV pictures. |
- Memory in orbit. Storage flown on spacecraft and rovers, and the radiation tests that show what flash survives.
- Compute in orbit. Computers and accelerators flown to the station, to orbit and to the Moon, and the tests behind them.
What it will not tell you
This is a record of milestones with a dated public source, not a list of every mission. Many spacecraft never publish how much storage they carry, and a missing mission is not a small one. An announcement with no figure and no hardware behind it is left off; a filing or plan with a number is kept and marked as a plan. Older radiation tests, and flights whose sources print only a year, wait for a source that dates them to the month.
A radiation test describes the parts and doses it chose, not every part of the same kind. For how flash works underneath, see Flash Foundations. For memory in robots, see Cogs and Cache; for optics for memory, Photon Fabric; for the makers’ results each quarter, the Earnings Desk; and for where the chips are made, the Fab Tracker.