Google's first data center satellite

Google’s first data‑center satellite, known as Suncatcher, launched earlier this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and carries four TPUs. It generates up to 1 kW and can run one TPU for roughly twenty minutes. The satellite is already communicating with ground control, executing DeepMind Gemma 4 AI tasks, including producing a haiku. The test campaign evaluates TPU performance under space‑radiation and thermal extremes, aiming to prove inference workloads tolerate bit‑flip errors. Successful results will lead to two additional satellites in 2027 with higher power, optical inter‑satellite links, forming part of Google’s Starcloud data‑center strategy and possibly supported by Alphabet’s stake in SpaceX. Google Suncatcher prototype satellite was launched by SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Google Suncatcher prototype satellite carries Google Tensor Processing Unit (four instances) Google Suncatcher prototype satellite is part of Google Suncatcher prototype space data center Google DeepMind Gemma 4 model was preloaded onto Google Suncatcher prototype satellite· Entity summary generated by Graphiti