The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and private company Space Solar have tested a space construction robot.

In a government announcement regarding the ‘AlbaTRUSS project,’ UKAEA and Space Solar stated that it “opens the door to building vast infrastructure projects in orbit, such as data centers and energy farms.”

The test at UKAEA’s test facilities at Culham Campus, Oxfordshire, used remotely operated dual-arm robotic manipulators to assemble a scaled structural truss bay.

This, the groups say, forms a key foundational block of what Space Solar hopes to build in space – giant solar arrays several kilometers long and around 20 meters wide.

“Up in space, the sun shines 24/7,” Dr. Sam Adlen, co-CEO of Space Solar, said. “Once constructed, these satellites capture solar power and beam it back down to Earth in the form of microwaves, which can be received by antennas on the ground and converted into electricity for the grid.”

Alden added: “The AlbaTRUSS project is a milestone not just for our satellite architecture, but for the future of large-scale structures in space, from data centers to energy infrastructure.”

Space Solar hopes to commission its first 30MW demonstrator system by 2029 and reach full gigawatt-scale capacity by the early 2030s. However, significant technical roadblocks still exist, as do concerns over launch costs.

Success of this project and others may hinge on SpaceX’s Starship dramatically reducing the cost of bringing matter to space – but a test of the giant rocket failed for the third time in a row just this week.

A number of companies plan to deploy data centers in space. Axiom Space, Starcloud (previously Lumen Orbit), NTT, Ramon.Space, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are among those planning on deploying in-orbit compute. This week, Sophia Space raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding for Edge compute in space.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt similarly said that he acquired rocket company Relativity Space to put data centers in orbit.

Earlier this year, startup Lonestar successfully put a small data center on the Moon, carrying an article from DCD. Read it here.