Google successfully booted Tensor Processing Units aboard its Project Suncatcher satellite and ran its first AI workload in orbit. The on-board Gemma 4 model generated a haiku about being in space in response to a prompt. Google also tested other space-themed prompts and telemetry requests.
The satellite launched earlier this month. Google plans to continue testing how its TPUs perform under thermal stress and radiation exposure in orbit. The company aims to verify that TPUs can reliably execute workloads in space, with a target milestone of deploying twin interconnected satellites in 2027.
Project Suncatcher represents Google's experimental push to place AI data centers in space.