Makenzie Lystrup

Makenzie Lystrup is a space systems executive, planetary scientist, and principal consultant at Peridot Services. She previously served as director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she led one of NASA’s major field centers and its large Earth and space science workforce, after earlier leadership roles in civil space at Ball Aerospace.

Power and Heat Are the Hard Limits for Orbital AI Data Centers

Makenzie Lystrup, a principal consultant at Peridot Services and former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, argues that orbital data centers should not be treated as one idea. In a Bloomberg Technology interview, she says near-term edge computing in orbit is plausible, while hyperscale AI infrastructure of the kind associated with SpaceX faces much harder constraints: power systems, heat rejection, radiation-tolerant hardware, networking, reliability and maintenance. Her central point is that the challenge is not merely launching servers into space, but operating them as space-qualified infrastructure.

Bloomberg TechnologyJun 17, 20265 min read