Google has successfully run an artificial intelligence (AI) model on a satellite in orbit and received its first complete response back on Earth, marking a key milestone in its Project Suncatcher initiative to explore the possibility of running AI computing infrastructure in space.
Project Suncatcher is exploring whether satellites could eventually be linked into constellations to handle larger AI workloads. The prototype satellite was launched on October 1 as part of the company’s long-term research effort to examine whether space could support scalable machine learning infrastructure, according to a blog post by Google.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the development in a post on X, describing it as a “‘hello world’ milestone for Project Suncatcher”. He said the team had sent a command to the satellite, booted up its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), run a prompt and received the response back on Earth. The company said the satellite completed its initial commissioning checks over the following weeks, including powering up its host and TPU trays and running early machine learning tests. Google said it subsequently tested the system with space-themed limericks and prompts asking it to report the technical status of the satellite’s systems. Google has said satellites in low Earth orbit could access near-constant sunlight and potentially generate up to eight times more solar power than on Earth.
