Google’s first Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is scheduled to launch Thursday, Oct. 1, on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission from Vandenberg in California’s Santa Barbara County, according to CNBC (opens in new tab) and Space.com (opens in new tab). CNBC (opens in new tab) put the launch time at 11:15 a.m. PT. Space.com (opens in new tab) said liftoff was scheduled for 2:18 p.m. ET (11:18 a.m. PT) and that the Falcon 9 will carry 130 payloads. CNBC (opens in new tab) reported that the uncrewed mission will carry Planet Labs satellites, among them a solar-powered prototype equipped with Google’s tensor processing units.
The flight will help the project team determine how the chips handle space radiation and how efficiently their heat is dissipated, Space.com (opens in new tab) reported. In a Sept. 24 post, Google said its Trillium TPUs were tested in a proton beam at UC Davis’s Crocker Nuclear Laboratory while running AI workloads. “Initial results have shown that our Trillium TPUs hold up remarkably well, and can survive a radiation total ionizing dose greater than what they would receive during a five-year space mission,” the company wrote.
In low Earth orbit, satellites can “access near-constant sunlight, generating up to eight times more solar power than on Earth,” Alphabet said, according to CNBC (opens in new tab). CNBC (opens in new tab) reported that Alphabet holds a stake worth more than $82 billion in SpaceX, which went public in June. This article will be updated after the launch.
On Sept. 24, Alphabet’s Google said it would launch a prototype satellite the following week for the first in-orbit test of Project Suncatcher, a research effort exploring whether space could host large-scale AI computing, Reuters (opens in new tab) and The Next Web (opens in new tab) reported.
The mission is scheduled on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare in partnership with Planet Labs and will assess how Google Tensor Processing Units withstand launch forces, radiation, and temperature extremes in low Earth orbit, according to Reuters (opens in new tab) and The Next Web (opens in new tab). Hardware previously passed ground vibration, proton-beam, and vacuum-chamber cooling tests, The Next Web (opens in new tab) reported from Google’s description.
Suncatcher, announced in late 2025, envisions solar-powered satellite fleets; Google has said low-Earth-orbit panels can collect far more solar power than ground arrays. A 2027 follow-on is described as testing laser links between two satellites. Cost remains a barrier: Google research has cited launch prices needing to fall sharply for space compute to compete.
Google has said the first mission is designed to gather in-orbit data and identify potential failure points, not to demonstrate an operational orbital data center, Reuters (opens in new tab) reported. Experts have said the concept remains years from being commercially viable, according to Reuters (opens in new tab).