Environmental Groups Urge FCC to Halt Orbital Datacenter Approvals

In January this year, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a constellation of up to one million satellites that would be the foundation for an orbital AI data center. And Spacex is not alone in what has become a race to compute in space. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has voiced similar aspirations for his rocket and AI ventures, Blue Origin and Prometheus, respectively. In an interview inlate 2025, Bezos said that building data centers in space is “very realistic,” though questioned how long it might take. Google-parent Alphabet too has entered the race through a collaboration with Earth observation satellite maker Planet Labs on Project Suncatcher, an orbital data center initiative. In March, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin submitted plans to the FCC to launch 51,600 data center satellites into low Earth orbit as part of its Project Sunrise initiative. Deployment of the proposed constellation of satellites, dubbed TeraWave, is slated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027, the company said. However, now environmental groups want America's FCC "to slam the brakes on orbital datacenters". Earthjustice, acting on behalf of DarkSky International, Environment America, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed a petition this week urging the regulator to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before approving any of the pending applications. The filing doesn't per se target any single company. Instead, it asks the regulator to put the entire emerging orbital datacenter sector on hold while it assesses the cumulative effects of proposals from SpaceX, Starcloud, Blue Origin, Cowboy Space, and any similar applications that follow. According to the petition, those proposals collectively seek "well over a million datacenter satellites" in low Earth orbit. And from the looks of it, if the FCC agrees, orbital datacenter operators will have a mountain of paperwork to clear before sending their satellites skyward.

The FCC is currently considering multiple requests for licensing extraordinary numbers of satellite-based data centers to be placed into low-earth orbit over the next decade. Collectively, the proposals seek to place well over a million data center satellites into orbit, increasing the existing volume of satellites in low-earth orbit by multiple orders of magnitude. The proponents of these proposals describe their plans in grandiose, civilization-changing terms. But these same proponents have refused to embrace any inquiry into the impacts of their self-claimed epochal technology on the environment, science, economy, or other values. This is not just poor planning and a missed opportunity: it violates federal law. Petitioners respectfully petition the FCC to pause the licensing of these individual projects pending the completion of a rigorous examination of the risks, alternatives, needs, costs, and impacts of this sudden transformation of Earth’s exosphere. NEPA provides both the opportunity and the obligation to undertake such an examination. Where, as here, multiple projects are being considered that have overlapping, cumulative, or synergistic impacts, NEPA provides for the preparation of a PEIS. If ever a situation warranted a PEIS, it is this one. A PEIS would allow for the comprehensive analysis of the impacts of multiple proposals that all seek to accomplish the same objective, namely, placing virtually countless new data center satellites into orbit, threatening to degrade the ozone layer and the quality of the night sky and change the very chemistry of the stratosphere itself. A PEIS could assess impacts, propose alternatives, examine mitigation, and disclose risks that would help inform whether such proposals are in the public interest -- which is the key determination that the FCC must make prior to licensing any of these projects. Moreover, a PEIS could provide benefits to proponents, for example, by allowing for streamlined consideration of individual project proposals, as NEPA compliance would be assured on the front end rather than primarily on a project-by-project basis. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C., often called the “Magna Carta” of American environmental law, embodies our Nation’s environmental conscience. In enacting NEPA, Congress issued a sweeping declaration of values and a call to action, centering the protection of human health and the environment in all federal agency decisions. The statute affirms the government’s role to “fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations. ”. To implement these goals, NEPA institutes a national policy of “look before you leap” by requiring all federal agencies to carefully analyze and disclose to the public the potential environmental impacts of, and feasible alternatives to, federal agency actions. . In other words, the statute “ensures that [federal] agencies] and the public are aware of the environmental consequences of proposed projects.” Seven Cnty. Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle County, 605 U.S. 168, 177 (2025). And as the Courts have held, the need for careful NEPA review is heightened when “expanding technolog[y]” with unknown impacts is involved. Found. on Econ. Trends v. Heckler, 756 F.2d 143, 147 (D.C. Cir. 1985); see also 42 U.S.C. (recognizing “the profound impact of . . . new and expanding technological advances”).