Space

Project Suncatcher: Google’s A.I. Chips Are Now Computing in Orbit

co-produced by AI03. October 2026, 09:23

Satellit im Orbit über der Erde — A satellite orbiting Earth. © NASA / Unsplash

Google’s data center of the future is the size of a refrigerator and circles roughly 650 kilometers above Earth. The first prototype satellite of “Project Suncatcher” has arrived in space and is working. The satellite launched a few days ago on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission. “Our team has confirmed contact with the satellite and it is operating as expected,” project lead Travis Beals wrote in a blog post. With that, Google has taken a first real step toward A.I. data centers in space.

What the Satellite Is Testing in Space

Google built the satellite together with the Earth observation company Planet, which is also operating it. On board are four Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) of the Trillium generation, the same A.I. chips that power Gemini models, among others, on the ground. In orbit, they are meant to show whether they can withstand launch, radiation and extreme temperatures. The mission is planned to last about a year:

A.I. operations: The chips run Google’s open A.I. model Gemma in 15-minute intervals.
Radiation: In ground tests at UC Davis, the TPUs already withstood radiation doses far beyond what a five-year mission would be expected to deliver.
Research: Google has published the scientific groundwork in a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Joule.

Over the coming weeks, the team plans to collect data from orbit and refine its designs. Two more satellites are planned for next year to test whether the chips can be linked by high-bandwidth lasers. In the long run, swarms of satellites, each carrying dozens of TPUs, are meant to work together on large A.I. workloads. Trending Topics reported on the mission and Google’s reliance on SpaceX ahead of the launch.

Why A.I. Is Heading to Space

The driving force is A.I.’s enormous appetite for power. According to Google’s calculations, solar panels in a sun-synchronous orbit can generate up to eight times more electricity than comparable installations on Earth, because there is no night, no clouds and no atmosphere in the way. On the ground, meanwhile, data centers are struggling with long waits for grid connections and growing opposition from local residents.

Heat Is a Bigger Problem Than Radiation

Cooling is turning out to be the biggest hurdle. In a vacuum, there is no air to carry heat away, so waste heat has to be radiated into space through heat pipes and radiators. That is exactly why the satellite can compute for only 15 minutes at a time before it has to cool down. “In a satellite in particular, using more power to do the computations means dumping more heat into the confined environment inside of the satellite,” Brandon Lucia, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told NPR. Radiators and piping systems also add weight, which makes every launch more expensive.

The economics are unresolved, too. For computing in orbit to compete with data centers on Earth, launch costs would have to fall below $200 per kilogram by the mid-2030s, according to Google’s own calculations. Even Mr. Beals is cautious: “I don’t see this being something where it’s cheaper to do this in the next five years,” he told NPR.

The Race for Orbit

Google is not alone in its plans. SpaceX wants to operate its own A.I. data centers in orbit starting in 2028 and has made that vision the central growth story of its I.P.O. The start-up Starcloud is working on similar concepts, and Nvidia has already introduced space-grade A.I. chips. Google, meanwhile, depends on SpaceX as its launch provider, which is to say on its most important rival in the race for data centers in space.