Google's test satellite for space-based AI computing is up and running, and its first job was writing a haiku.

Project Suncatcher is Google's research effort to see whether data centers could someday run in orbit on solar power. Its first prototype satellite, built with the satellite company Planet and launched Oct. 1, has finished its checkout phase and returned what Google calls the "first-ever AI response from a data center class TPU in orbit" (Google, Sundar Pichai on X). A TPU is Google's own AI chip, the kind it uses in its data centers. The team asked Gemma 4, Google's open model running on board, for a haiku about space and received it as the satellite passed over Svalbard: "Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core." It's a small start. According to TechCrunch, the satellite carries four TPUs but can run only one at a time, for about 20 minutes, because it generates only up to 1 kilowatt of electricity. Next, Google plans to test how the chips handle heat and radiation in orbit, and then to launch two linked satellites in 2027.

What to watch: whether the chips hold up to radiation and heat over months, not minutes. That's what decides if orbital data centers are more than an experiment. Nothing here changes Google's AI products today.