Google to run first in-orbit test of AI chips next week under Project Suncatcher

Google is taking AI compute literally off-planet. Under Project Suncatcher, it will launch a prototype satellite next week aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission, working with Planet Labs on the first in-orbit test of running AI chips in space. The stated goal is to explore hosting large-scale AI computing in orbit, powered by abundant solar energy, and to assess how the hardware withstands the forces of launch, radiation exposure, and the extreme temperature swings of Low Earth Orbit.

The rationale is energy and cooling: terrestrial data centers face mounting power and water constraints, and space offers continuous solar power and passive radiative cooling. But the engineering challenges are severe — radiation-hardening, thermal management without atmosphere, and the latency and bandwidth of orbit-to-ground links.

This is an early, exploratory experiment rather than a deployment, and it slots into a broader industry scramble for compute capacity — the same week xAI talked about doubling its Colossus 2 cluster and Alibaba touted 20GW of data centers. Skeptics will note the economics of launching and servicing orbital compute remain daunting. What to watch: the prototype's survival data and whether Google publishes performance-per-watt results that justify scaling the concept.