Google’s AI chip satellite reaches orbit

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 11:32 a.m. PT. It was carrying the Transporter-18 rideshare mission and its 130 payloads, among them the first prototype satellite for Google's Project Suncatcher, a long-term effort to find out whether AI data centers could one day run in space. The satellite will be the first to test the company's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), the chips Google uses to train and run its AI models, in orbit.scientificamerican+3

Planet Labs ↗ 8.43% built the spacecraft with Google. The company said Thursday evening that it had made initial contact with the Suncatcher prototype and had begun commissioning it. On the same flight, Planet also launched Tanager-2, a hyperspectral satellite, and 18 SuperDove imaging satellites.businesswire

A "very minimal test"

The refrigerator-sized satellite, which Google calls MVP, holds four TPUs. It is expected to operate for about a year and will answer simple AI queries. Its power supply is about 1 kilowatt, so the chips will run in bursts of roughly 15 minutes and then shut down to keep from overheating.cnn+4

"This first launch is about seeing what works, identifying points of failure, and applying those findings to future missions," Travis Beals, who leads Project Suncatcher at Google, said in the company's announcement. Before launch, Google tested the chips in a particle accelerator at the University of California, Davis. The company said the results showed the chips could handle more radiation than they would face over five years in orbit. Without air in space to carry heat away, the satellite also tests a cooling system made of heat pipes and radiators.scrippsnews+3

Google plans to launch two more satellites in 2027 to test laser links between spacecraft. Those links would be needed to connect clusters of satellites, and the company has proposed groups of 81. Also on Thursday, Google published a peer-reviewed analysis in the journal Joule. It estimates that a single data center satellite may need 50 to 100 kilowatts of power.tech.yahoo+2

Crowded field, open questions

Alphabet ↗ 1.62% is not the first company to put AI hardware in space. The startup Starcloud launched an Nvidia ↗ 1.34% H100 chip in November 2025. SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to deploy up to 1 million AI computing satellites. Astronomers warn that large constellations of this kind would add to light pollution and increase collision risks.inkl+3

The economics are still unproven. Speaking to TechCrunch, Beals said launch prices may need to fall to about \$200 per kilogram by 2035. In an interview with NPR, he said he did not expect orbital computing to be cheaper than computing on the ground within the next five years.headtopics+1

"It doesn't help a lot if this is technically possible, if it's always going to be too expensive to be practical," Beals said.headtopics