On October 30, 2026, Google confirmed that a data center-grade TPU aboard a prototype satellite produced its first model response in orbit, an early "hello world" for Project Suncatcher.
What the test involved, in short:
- The satellite, called MVP, was built with Planet and carries four Trillium-generation TPUs.
- Gemma 4, an open-weight model from Google DeepMind, was pre-installed on board.
- During a ground-station pass over Svalbard, operators uploaded a prompt asking for a space-themed haiku, and the model answered from orbit. Telemetry prompts to check the payload status were also part of the tests.
It is a functional milestone, not a production system: the point is to see whether this kind of hardware keeps working in the space environment, with the energy constraints a satellite imposes.
Full write-up with sources on Tadna: https://www.tadna.com/en/news/google-executes-its-first-in-orbit-ai-response-with-the-suncatcher-project?utm_source=dev&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tadna
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