# Booz Allen Hamilton (LLMs on the ISS): orbital data center program

> United States (United States), prime contractor. Stage 4 of 7: Payload demo flown. It declared an LLM application operational on SBC-2 on 2024-07-11 and deployed Meta Llama 3.2 there in April 2025.

- Canonical page: https://spacenexus.us/orbital-data-centers/booz-allen-space-llm
- This Markdown version: https://spacenexus.us/orbital-data-centers/booz-allen-space-llm.md
- Data as of: 2026-10-05 (last evidence review)
- How the numbers are made: https://spacenexus.us/orbital-data-centers#method

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## Stage evidence

- It declared an LLM application operational on SBC-2 on 2024-07-11 and deployed Meta Llama 3.2 there in April 2025. Sources: [Nextgov](https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/08/generative-ai-tool-deployed-aboard-international-space-station/398506/)

## Approach

- Orbit: LEO (ISS)
- Architecture: Deploys AI applications, including LLMs, on HPE Spaceborne Computer-2
- Power: ISS-provided
- Cooling: ISS-provided
- Compute: HPE SBC-2 with NVIDIA GPUs
- Customers: Astronaut support (document retrieval, repair)

## Milestones

| Date | Status | Confidence | Milestone | Sources |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2024-07-11 | achieved | Confirmed | LLM application operational on SBC-2 (announced 2024-08-01). Retrieval-augmented generation app; inference on the ISS, not a free-flying satellite. | [Nextgov](https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/08/generative-ai-tool-deployed-aboard-international-space-station/398506/) |
| 2025-04-25 | achieved | Confirmed | Space Llama: fine-tuned Llama 3.2 on SBC-2. With Meta, HPE and NVIDIA. | [Meta](https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/space-llama-metas-open-source-ai-model-heading-into-orbit/) |

## Announced next steps (as the organisation stated them)

No dated next step announced.

## What to watch (SpaceNexus note, not a prediction)

No further dated orbital AI deployment announced.

## Cautions

- "First LLM in space" claims compete by category; this one is ISS-hosted inference.

## Sources

- [Nextgov](https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/08/generative-ai-tool-deployed-aboard-international-space-station/398506/)
- [Meta](https://about.fb.com/news/2025/04/space-llama-metas-open-source-ai-model-heading-into-orbit/)

## Licence and credits

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