Google will launch an experimental satellite carrying AI chips into orbit Oct. 1. The launch is the first step in Project Suncatcher, the company’s effort to build solar-powered AI data centers in space, The New York Times reported Sept. 24.
The satellite, named MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator and was built with Planet Labs. It will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif. It carries four Google tensor processing units, which together match the computing power of one data center server.
MVP will answer simple AI queries using Google’s Gemini and operate for one year. Travis Beals, Google’s senior director of product management for Project Suncatcher, said the chips can run for about 15 minutes before they must shut down to cool.
Google plans to launch two more satellites next year and has designs for fleets of more than 80. The company estimates orbital data centers will cost about the same as data centers on the ground by the mid-2030s.
Still, James Manyika, DPhil, Google’s senior vice president for research, said the effort is in its early stages and will take years to develop.
“We don’t expect, to be perfectly frank, that we’ll have anything usefully operational in the next few years,” he told the Times.
