Environmental groups have called for the FCC to freeze orbital data center licenses until a comprehensive environmental impact review is completed.
Environmental groups have petitioned the FCC to halt approvals for orbital datacenters, warning that the agency should not license constellations totaling over a million satellites without conducting a comprehensive environmental review.
Earthjustice, representing DarkSky International, Environment America, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), filed the petition urging the FCC to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before approving any pending applications in this sector.
Rather than targeting a specific company, the petition requests a freeze on the entire emerging orbital datacenter sector while the agency assesses the cumulative effects of proposals from SpaceX, Starcloud, Blue Origin, Cowboy Space, and similar applications. The groups estimate these proposals collectively seek "well over a million datacenter satellites" in low Earth orbit—a scale that would increase the existing volume of satellites in orbit by multiple orders of magnitude.
The petitioners argue that the FCC is attempting to apply licensing rules designed for much smaller satellite constellations to an entirely new class of infrastructure. "If ever a situation warranted a PEIS, it is this one," they argue, noting that such a review would allow the agency to examine "the risks, alternatives, needs, costs, and impacts of this sudden transformation of Earth's exosphere" before determining whether the projects serve the public interest.
The petition identifies a broad range of environmental concerns: rocket launch emissions, pollutants from satellites burning up during atmospheric reentry, ozone layer depletion, orbital debris accumulation, light pollution, wildlife impacts, and interference with astronomical observation.
A central argument of the petition is that cumulative effects cannot be properly understood by reviewing applications individually. "It is difficult to imagine a better example of multiple projects presenting essentially identical impacts and risks that compound synergistically and cumulatively than the present proposals for orbital datacenter constellations," the groups state, adding that the FCC's position that such projects have no environmental impact is "plainly inapplicable here."
The petitioners also challenge the applicants themselves, arguing they describe their plans in grand terms while providing little detail about environmental consequences. "The proponents of these proposals describe their plans in grandiose, civilization-changing terms," the petition notes. "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."
The petition comes as the FCC reviews its environmental assessment framework for satellites, acknowledging that rapid industry growth has raised new questions about applying existing rules. The current approach generally treats satellite licenses as categorically excluded from detailed environmental review—an approach the petitioners argue no longer fits proposals measured in hundreds of thousands or millions of spacecraft rather than dozens or thousands.
Should the FCC accept the petition, orbital datacenter operators would face substantial regulatory hurdles before launching their hardware.