Power in space · Generation, transmission, storage, use · Government and first-party sources
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Image of the Day · 2026-09-05

The Comet That Computes

The comet thinks, and exhales: computation wrapped around a comet nucleus, its waste heat vented as a green sublimation jet.

An artistic imagining, not real hardware. A lumpy dark comet nucleus hanging in deep space, girdled around its equator by a segmented ring of machinery whose modules carry small green lights, with one cluster of modules burning brighter than the rest. Two gridded mirror wings stretch out from the ring to the left and right, and thin heat pipes run up the comet's shoulder to a vent at its pole, where a torn, feather-edged jet of bright green gas streams upward, the waste heat of the computers shedding the comet's own ice. A small service craft floats nearby for scale and a tiny hard sun shines far in the upper left.
An artistic imagining of power spent on thinking in deep space: a data center wrapped around a comet nucleus, fed by mirror wings, whose waste heat sublimates the comet's own ice into the green jet streaming from its pole. The bright cluster of modules is one rack's thought moving toward the vent; the ring of lights continues around the far side, out of sight. Image: poweringspace.com. Artistic imagining.
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