Reported by TechCrunch AI
Google Suncatcher’s prototype space data center is online and communicating with the ground after launching earlier this month alongside more than 100 other spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The satellite, which carries four Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and generates up to 1 kW of electricity, is intended to pave the way for future networks of close-flying satellites performing large inference workloads in orbit. However, the power demands of the TPU mean it can only turn one on for about twenty minutes at a time, complicating the already tricky business of space-to-ground communications.
After a commissioning process that tested out the satellite’s subsystems over about three weeks, the spacecraft was ready to work. When engineers on the ground sent their first prompt this week, they asked the model pre-loaded onto the satellite, Google DeepMind’s Gemma 4, to write a haiku about being in space. And thus:
More from the original report
Blue marble below Data streams in silent grace Starlight feeds my core. ✨
Google said it tested the model with these space-themed limericks (they should have sent a poet?) and, perhaps more importantly, the company asked the spacecraft to report on the orbital conditions around the satellite.
A spokesperson told TechCrunch that the satellite was operating nominally.
The ongoing test campaign will examine how the chips perform under thermal stress and in the space radiation environment. Google has extensively tested its TPUs in particle accelerators on Earth, but now needs to see how radiation’s real effects on their hardware in space affect their processor. Radiation can cause “bit flips”—causing a stored value in computer memory—and that in turn can corrupt data without triggering typical monitoring tools.
Testing on the ground suggested the impact of radiation would be minimal for inference workloads and more of a problem for training a model, but now the Google team will get to assess those dynamics in reality, not a simulation.
If the TPUs onboard this spacecraft prove capable, the next step will be launching two more satellites equipped with the advanced chips in 2027. Those spacecraft will support higher power generation and demonstrate inter-satellite optical links.