On Oct. 1, Google is scheduled to launch a satellite that can run its artificial intelligence technologies in space. Others say they are not far behind. Elon Musk, founder of the rocket company Space X, recently said that “A.I. in space” will be the cheapest way of powering the technology “not more than five years from now.” Other tech titans, including Jeff Bezos, founder of Space X rival Blue Origin, Sam Altman, chief executive of Open AI, and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, have also backed this vision, hoping to put data centers in space and fuel them with the rays of the Sun.

But many experts question how feasible this will be. Is Google really launching a data center into space next month? Not exactly. With help from Space X and the satellite company Planet Labs, Google is launching a satellite that carries the equivalent of a single data center server. The launch is an early test of what Google hopes to do on a much larger scale in the years to come.

Why do tech companies want to put data centers in space? Down here on Earth, Google and the other leading A.I. companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on the data centers needed to power their A.I. technologies. By putting data centers in space, companies like Google can theoretically solve both the real estate problem and the electricity problem, but the financial problem remains.

How might it solve the electricity problem? The plan is to put these data centers into what is called a sun-synchronous orbit, which means that Earth never passes between the satellites and the Sun. That allows it to shine consistently on solar panels attached to these satellites, and the panels will provide power to the computer servers.