Google’s Suncatcher satellite runs AI in orbit and sends a haiku home
Google’s prototype data centre satellite has run an AI model in orbit and sent its answer back to Earth. The onboard Gemma 4 model wrote a haiku about being in space, Travis Beals, a senior director at Google, wrote in a blog post on Friday. The satellite launched on 1 October for Project Suncatcher, Google’s […] This story continues at The Next Web
Google’s prototype data centre satellite has run an AI model in orbit and sent its answer back to Earth. The onboard Gemma 4 model wrote a haiku about being in space, Travis Beals, a senior director at Google, wrote in a blog post on Friday.
The satellite launched on 1 October for Project Suncatcher, Google’s research effort to run AI computing in space. Google called the haiku the first AI response from a data centre class TPU, its own AI chip, in orbit.
“Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core.” Gemma 4, on the Suncatcher satellite, as published by Google
Google sent the prompt during a pass over a ground station. The poem came back as the satellite flew over Svalbard, Norway. The team then tried space-themed limericks and prompts asking the satellite to report on its own systems. The prompt asked for a haiku written as a TPU orbiting Earth, Thomas Claburn reported for The Register .
The satellite holds four TPUs and generates up to 1 kilowatt of power, Tim Fernholz reported for TechCrunch . Because of that power limit, it can run only one TPU at a time, for about 20 minutes. Testing its systems took about three weeks, and a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch the satellite was working normally.
Omar Sanseviero, who works on Gemma at Google DeepMind, wrote on X that the model ran on stored solar energy.
Google will now test how the TPUs cope with heat and radiation in orbit. Radiation can flip bits in a chip’s memory and corrupt data without warning. Google’s tests on the ground suggested this matters less for running models than for training them, according to TechCrunch.
If the chips hold up, Google plans to launch two linked satellites in 2027. They will make more power and test laser links between satellites, TechCrunch reported.
Google announced the launch in September. Startups also plan data centres in orbit, and Starcloud raised $250M in August. SpaceX has told investors its own orbital data centres may never work. Google’s plans also depend on SpaceX making its Starship rocket fully reusable, TechCrunch reported.
