Google Suncatcher‘s prototype space data center satellite has come online and is communicating with the ground, after launching earlier this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 with more than 100 other spacecraft. The satellite carries four Google TPUs and generates up to 1 kW of electricity, and it is meant to pave the way for future networks of close-flying satellites running large inference workloads in orbit. But the TPU‘s power demands mean only one can be turned on at a time, for roughly twenty minutes, which complicates space-to-ground communications.

After a three-week commissioning process, engineers sent their first prompt to the model pre-loaded on the satellite, Google DeepMind’s Gemma 4, asking it to write a haiku about being in space. The result: “Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core.” Google also tested space-themed limericks, and more importantly had the spacecraft report on orbital conditions around it; a spokesperson said the satellite was operating nominally.

The ongoing test campaign focuses on how the chips hold up under thermal stress and the space radiation environment. Google has tested TPUs in particle accelerators on Earth, but now needs to observe real radiation effects, which can cause bit flips that corrupt data without triggering typical monitoring tools. Ground testing suggested radiation’s impact would be minimal for inference workloads and more of a problem for model training, but the team will now assess those dynamics in reality rather than simulation.

If this TPU proves capable, the next step is launching two more satellites with advanced chips in 2027, supporting higher power generation and demonstrating inter-satellite optical links. Google’s Starcloud project is described as largely alone among space data center visions in planning high-speed links between satellites to support coherent distributed workloads; SpaceX‘s data centers are expected to use laser links but orbit too far apart to share processing effectively. Companies like Starcloud and Cowboy Space expect to perform inference loads on individual satellites.

Google and SpaceX‘s visions are closely linked. Alphabet holds a significant investment stake in SpaceX, and both companies will require Starship, the in-development heavy-lift rocket, to be fully and rapidly reusable. A peer-reviewed Suncatcher analysis estimated SpaceX would need to fly Starship 1,800 times to achieve the same learning-driven cost reductions as earlier vehicles. Suncatcher is a Google moonshot focused on infrastructure that will be economical in the 2030s, though its path may depend on how the rest of the company handles AI pressures; Alphabet’s stock plunged this week after AI integration in search hurt ad revenue growth. The article also corrects that the prototype has four TPUs onboard but can only operate one at a time.