Project Suncatcher tests TPUs in space aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18

Google is sending its AI brains to space. Project Suncatcher, a collaboration between Google and Planet Labs, will fly a prototype satellite equipped with four Tensor Processing Units aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission, scheduled for October 1, 2026. The goal: figure out whether low Earth orbit is a viable home for the kind of machine learning compute that’s currently straining terrestrial data centers to their limits. The prototype is roughly the size of a refrigerator. It carries four Trillium-generation TPUs, Google’s custom-designed AI chips, which will need to survive the violent vibrations and g-forces of launch before facing an even less hospitable workplace: the radiation-soaked vacuum of space. Why put AI chips in orbit The logic is surprisingly straightforward. Satellites in dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbits enjoy near-constant sunlight, potentially generating up to eight times more solar power than equivalent panels on the ground. For AI workloads that devour electricity like few other computing tasks, that’s an enormous advantage. The satellite won’t be running marathon AI training sessions, though. Due to cooling limitations in the vacuum of space, the TPUs will ope...