Google launches Project Suncatcher prototype — first TPUs in orbit aboard SpaceX Transporter-18
What happened
Google's AI chips reached orbit for the first time on Thursday, Oct. 1, when a Planet Labs-built prototype satellite carrying four of Google's Trillium Tensor Processing Units launched aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The satellite — Project Suncatcher M1, deployed roughly 61 minutes after liftoff alongside about 130 other payloads — is a hardware test, not an orbital data center: Google confirmed contact with the satellite and that it is operating as expected. The refrigerator-sized prototype runs on about a kilowatt of solar power and will run AI workloads in roughly 15-minute bursts (a version of Google's Gemma model) because there is no air in space to carry heat away from the chips. CEO Sundar Pichai called it 'one small step for TPUs.'
Why it matters & what’s next are part of Pro, along with the audio summary.
Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- GOOGL (Alphabet): long-horizon moonshot optionality
- PL (Planet Labs): partner that built the spacecraft platform and is commissioning the satellite. The space-AI-infrastructure narrative more broadly (satellite and edge-compute names).