Google will launch its first AI chips into orbit next week
Google will send its own AI chips into orbit for the first time next week, in the first flight test of Project Suncatcher. A prototype satellite carrying its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) will fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission.
Google built the satellite with Planet, the Earth-imaging company. The mission will measure how the chips cope with the stress of launch, the radiation of space and its extremes of heat and cold.
Suncatcher, announced last November, explores whether AI computing could one day run on fleets of satellites. Google says panels in low Earth orbit can collect up to eight times more solar power than on the ground.
The hardware has already passed tests on the ground. A trip to orbit takes about ten minutes and can put the chips under forces of 50 to 100 times gravity. To copy that, the team shook the satellite hard on all...
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