UAE-based Madari Space will pilot sending data centers into space in 2026.

The company is headed and founded by Shareef Al Romaithi, a former Etihad pilot.

Romaithi claimed to Bloomberg this week that the company’s first mission is currently planned for Q3 2026.

Details around the satellite/data center the company is planning to launch, as well as how much capital the company will be investing in the project, weren’t shared.

When asked about the company, Romaithi said that this would “address the exponential growth of data that is being generated both on Earth as well as in space.

“The data is all raw, unprocessed, and needs to be downstreamed to terrestrial data centers,” he said. “By placing data centers in space, we have the ability to store and process this data in space, enabling the data owners to make informed decisions in real time.”

Responding to a question about the feasibility of the idea, Romaithi claimed that “the reduced cost of launch services and the price per kilogram to launch any product or technology into space has reduced dramatically.

“And by addressing the data center operation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), we have the ability to de-risk the operations and use LEO as a test bed to mature our technology before we can advance into deeper space and tackle the cislunar economy.”

Cislunar refers to a region of space between the Earth and the Moon.

The CEO went on to say that data centers in space would specifically address “data that is generated right at the source in space.” This includes data generated by Earth observation satellites.

“This data is all raw, unprocessed, and must be downstreamed to terrestrial data centers. So by placing data centers in space, we have the ability to store and process this data in space, enabling the data owners to make decisions in real time.”

Romaithi did not specify what these decisions were. He was likely alluding to the process of reacting to a conjunction data message, which is a notification consisting of raw data sent to satellite operators when two objects get too close to one another.

Madari Space’s target clients will be space operators, like Earth observation operators. Romaithi added that the company would target governments and corporations who want to store their large data sets ‘safely.’

The company is backed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund, which is named after the prime minister of the UAE.

Madari Space currently resides in one of the UAE’s Space Economic Zones, which offers companies certain incentives, including the issuance of a permit for specific space activities, collaboration with certain space labs, and access to accelerators.

The UAE is active in the data center market. Khazna, one of the Middle East’s largest data center operators, is owned by G42, and the state will be home to the UAE-Stargate project, which will offer 5GW of compute capacity using Nvidia Grace Blackwell GB300 systems.

In-orbit compute is being pitched as a way to address data congestion in satellites, which are producing more types and quantities of data at higher fidelities than ever before. Others are pitching space data centers as a resilient alternative to terrestrial projects – though any large-scale deployments will likely be incredibly expensive and face numerous operational challenges.

Companies including Axiom Space, Starcloud (previously Lumen Orbit), NTT, Lonestar, Ramon.Space, Sophia Space, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are looking at deploying in-orbit compute.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/uaes-madari-space-to-pilot-sending-data-centers-into-space-in-2026/