Google's Suncatcher: TPU Satellite Launches Oct. 1 on Falcon 9

Google will put four AI chips in orbit on October 1. The prototype spacecraft, called MVP, rides a SpaceX Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Transporter-18 rideshare, carrying four Trillium-generation TPUs fed by solar arrays rated at around 1 kilowatt, as the New York Times reported. Coverage of the story described that power budget as "roughly enough to run a hair dryer."

MVP is the first physical piece of Project Suncatcher, the research moonshot Google announced in November 2025 to test whether machine-learning compute belongs in space. It was built with Planet, the Earth-imaging company.

Google's research blog sketches the eventual design as clusters of 81 satellites flying in formation within a one-kilometer radius at around 650 kilometers altitude, wired together by free-space laser links. Google estimates space-based AI clusters could become economically feasible in 2035, and only if launch costs fall to about $200 per kilogram, well below current launch costs that reach $1,500 to $2,900 per kilogram.

The problem is that space is a hostile place to run silicon. There is no air to carry heat off the chips, cosmic radiation can fry them, and the TPUs onboard MVP will run compute for approximately 15 minutes at a time before thermal shutdown forces a cooldown. Google compares the precision required of the eventual laser links to "hitting a coin-size target from miles away while both points are moving."

Four researchers on our Who's Who list shared the NYT piece the day it ran. The next public step Google has committed to is a 2027 launch of a pair of TPU-equipped satellites with Planet Labs, when the company says it will test those laser links in orbit.