On October 1, 2026, Google successfully launched its first Project Suncatcher prototype satellite into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission. Developed in collaboration with Planet, this highly experimental spacecraft carries four Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) aimed at assessing hardware survival in extreme space environments. Designed to run for only 15 minutes at a time to test custom vacuum-based heat pipes and radiators, this mission represents a crucial engineering step toward establishing autonomous, solar-powered machine learning clusters in low Earth orbit.
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