Google's Project Suncatcher prototype satellite — its first attempt at a data centre in space — is online and communicating with the ground, TechCrunch reported on October 30. The satellite, built with Planet and launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on October 1 alongside more than 100 other spacecraft, carries four Google Tensor Processing Units and generates up to 1 kW of electricity. After about three weeks of commissioning tests, engineers sent it a first prompt this week.

The onboard model is Google DeepMind's Gemma 4, and the request was suitably ceremonial: write a haiku about being in space. It replied: "Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core." The team also asked the spacecraft to report on the orbital conditions around it, and a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch the satellite is operating nominally.

The engineering constraints are severe: the power budget means only one TPU can run at a time, in bursts of roughly 20 minutes, which complicates timing contact with ground stations. The test campaign's real purpose is measuring how the chips handle thermal stress and the space radiation environment, where high-energy particles can flip bits and silently corrupt data. If the TPUs hold up, Google plans two more Suncatcher satellites in 2027 with higher power generation and laser links between spacecraft — the step toward the close-flying inference networks the project ultimately imagines.