Google to launch AI-chip satellite next week in first orbital test of Project Suncatcher
Google has announced it will launch a prototype satellite on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare next week to test its Tensor Processing Units in orbit — the first in-orbit test of its Project Suncatcher research effort.
Google has announced it will launch a prototype satellite next week carrying its AI chips into orbit, in the first in-orbit test of its Project Suncatcher research effort to explore whether space could host large-scale AI computing.
The satellite, developed with Planet Labs, will fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission and test how Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) withstand launch forces, radiation and extreme temperatures in low Earth orbit.
Google said it had tested its TPUs while running AI workloads at a facility at the University of California, Davis, but that orbital testing was needed to understand how the hardware performs in the real environment. The mission will also evaluate cooling designs — combining heat pipes with radiators — since conventional airflow cooling is impossible in the vacuum of space.
“This first launch is about seeing what works, identifying points of failure, and applying those findings to future missions,” Travis Beals, a senior director at Google, wrote in a blog post cited by Gizmodo.
Google says satellites in low Earth orbit could generate up to eight times more solar power than on Earth, easing the energy constraints facing terrestrial data centres. SpaceX and Starcloud are also pursuing orbital data centres.
Experts say the concept remains years from being commercially viable given high launch costs, engineering constraints and production bottlenecks. Google plans two more satellites in 2027 to test the high-bandwidth laser links needed to connect future computing clusters.
Sources
More on this topic: all Technology stories