By Domenico Vicinanza
Publication Date: 2025-12-03 12:05:00
Google recently unveiled Project Suncatcher, a research “moonshot” aimed at building a data center in space. The technology giant plans to deploy a constellation of solar-powered satellites that run on their own TPU chips and transmit data to each other via lasers.
Google’s TPU (Tensor Processing Units) chips, designed specifically for machine learning, already power Google’s latest AI model, Gemini 3. The Suncatcher project is investigating whether they can be adapted to survive radiation and extreme temperatures and function reliably in orbit. The goal is to launch two prototype satellites into low Earth orbit, about 400 miles above Earth, in early 2027.
Google’s competitors are also exploring space-based computing. Elon Musk said that SpaceX will “build data centers in space,” suggesting that the next generation of Starlink satellites could be scaled to handle such processing. Several smaller companies, including a US startup called Starcloud, have also…
