Google to put 4 TPUs into orbit on October 1
The Project Suncatcher prototype will answer simple Gemini queries from space, more than a year earlier than Google's published timeline.
Google will launch a satellite carrying four of its tensor processing units on October 1, The New York Times reported, in the first flight test of Project Suncatcher. The satellite, called MVP, rides a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base and is about the size of a refrigerator.
The four chips together match roughly one data-centre server, and are meant to answer simple Gemini queries from orbit over a mission of about a year, according to the Times report. The satellite draws about a kilowatt of solar power. The chips can run for roughly 15 minutes before they must stop to cool.
Cooling is the part with no terrestrial answer. Fans do nothing in a vacuum, so Google built a system of conductive materials and radiator panels to move heat into space, the Times reported. Google's own radiation testing found that errors caused by radiation can generally be corrected by restarting the chips.
The date moves the programme forward. When Google Research published the Suncatcher design in November 2025, it said two prototype satellites were slated to launch by early 2027 with Planet Labs, and modelled an illustrative constellation of 81 satellites in a sun-synchronous orbit at about 650km.
Google plans two more satellites next year and has designs for fleets of more than 80, the Times reported, with a custom satellite the length of a football pitch under consideration. The company's published estimate is that launch costs could fall below $200 per kilogram by the mid-2030s, at which point orbital compute might cost about what ground data centres do. The Verge confirmed the launch plan on Thursday.