Google and Planet Labs are collaborating on Project Suncatcher, a refrigerator-sized prototype satellite equipped with four Trillium-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). The satellite will launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission on October 1, 2026, to assess whether low Earth orbit can host machine learning infrastructure currently constrained by terrestrial data centers. Due to cooling limitations in the vacuum of space, the TPUs will operate in short bursts of approximately 15 minutes, running Google’s Gemini models to benchmark real-world performance in orbital conditions. Ground-based radiation testing showed the chips withstand doses of 2-15 krad without hard failures, exceeding the expected exposure over the satellite’s five-year mission lifetime. Google ultimately envisions a constellation of approximately 81 satellites connected via high-bandwidth laser links, with two-satellite laser link tests planned for 2027, though Project Suncatcher remains a research project with no timeline for production workloads.
Source: Read the original article
