Google's AI satellite sends a very expensive haiku to Earth

A poem from orbit

Google's Suncatcher satellite launched at the start of the month and went into low Earth orbit. Ground controllers sent it a prompt: write a haiku from the view of a TPU (a special computer chip for AI) orbiting Earth. The satellite's onboard AI model, Gemma 4, sent back a three-line poem as it passed over Svalbard, Norway. Google calls this its "Hello World" milestone, meaning the first basic test worked.

Key numbers

• The haiku used about 20 tokens (small chunks of text the AI reads and writes), which would cost about $0.000012 through Google Cloud.
• The satellite may weigh about 500 kg, and a launch may cost about $7,000 per kg today.
• Google says launch costs could fall to $200 per kg. It thinks SpaceX could reach that by 2035, more or less.
• The chip's memory started to show errors after 2 krad(Si) of radiation. Google's minimum requirement is 750 rad(Si), so the chip passed with a wide margin.

Why put data centers in space?

Data centers use a lot of electricity. In space, solar power can be strong and steady. Google says that if launching satellites becomes much cheaper, running AI in orbit could cost about the same as running data centers on the ground. Space is also harsh, with radiation that can flip bits in computer memory, so Google is testing how its chips hold up.

Why it matters

This is an early test, not a working space data center yet. Still, it shows Google is preparing for a future where AI computing might happen in orbit. The results so far suggest the chips can handle some radiation, which is a key question for the idea to work.

What to watch next

• Next year, Google plans to test two satellites that talk to each other.
• Google wants to send many small satellites instead of a few large ones.
• More tests will check how TPUs handle heat and radiation.
• Researchers still need to study whether radiation errors affect AI training, not just answering questions.