Google said on September 24 that its first Project Suncatcher satellite, built with Planet, will launch on a SpaceX rideshare mission next week. The satellite carries four of Google’s TPU chips and will test how they cope with radiation, heat, and launch forces. Reports put the launch on October 1.
New to this? Read it in simple words
- Google will send a small satellite with four of its AI chips into space next week.
- It wants to see if the chips survive radiation, heat, and cold in orbit.
- Solar panels in space can collect much more power than on Earth.
- Experts say real data centres in space are still years away.
- TPU
- A chip Google designs to run AI.
- Orbit
- The path a satellite follows around the Earth.
- Rideshare mission
- One rocket launch that carries satellites for several customers.
The first test in orbit
The prototype satellite was built with Planet, the Earth-imaging company, and will fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Google says the launch is next week, and reports put it on October 1.
The satellite is called MVP and is about the size of a refrigerator. It carries four of Google’s TPUs, the chips Google designs to run AI, and its solar panels supply about one kilowatt of power.
Teslarati reports that Google will run its Gemini models on the chips only in bursts of about 15 minutes. The chips then shut down so the radiators can get rid of the heat.
The goal is to learn how the chips handle launch forces, radiation, and the extreme heat and cold of low Earth orbit.
Google says the launch is next week. All test results so far come from Google.
What Google has tested so far
During launch, parts of a satellite can face forces of 50 to 100 times gravity. Google says it shook the hardware on the ground to copy this, and it held up.
Engineers also fired a proton beam at running Trillium TPUs at UC Davis’s Crocker Nuclear Laboratory. According to Google, the chips survived more radiation than they would get in five years in orbit.
Cooling is harder. In a vacuum, heat cannot escape through air, so Google uses heat pipes and radiators, which it has tested in vacuum chambers on the ground.
A long road to data centres in space
Google says solar panels in the right orbit can collect up to eight times more power than on Earth. That is the main idea behind the project.
Its next step, planned for 2027, is two satellites that test fast laser links between them. Google’s full design imagines clusters of 81 satellites flying close together, according to Quartz.
Experts say the idea is still years from commercial use, Quartz reports. Google’s own research estimates that launch prices must fall below about $200 per kilogram, which it thinks could happen around the mid-2030s.
Others are racing too. Quartz notes that the Nvidia-backed startup Starcloud put an Nvidia H100 chip in orbit last November.
Sources
Every fact in this story comes from the sources below. Open them to check our work.
- 1Primary source · September 24, 2026Behind Project Suncatcher, our moonshot to put AI in space Google
- 2Research · September 25, 2026Project Suncatcher Puts Four Google TPUs in Orbit on October 1, and Surviving the Trip Is the Whole Test HWBusters
- 3Research · September 24, 2026Google is sending its AI chips into orbit for the first time next week Quartz
- 4
We read Google’s announcement, then compared Quartz, HWBusters, and Teslarati. Google itself only says “next week”, so the October 1 date comes from those reports. Test results and power figures are Google’s own claims until the satellite flies.