The Sun, imaged in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. Photo: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA.

Google is launching a new “moonshot” project focused on the future of in-space computing and solar-powered satellites called Project Suncatcher, with plans to deploy an in-orbit demonstration with Planet in early 2027. Announced Tuesday, Project Suncatcher is a research project out of X, which is described as Google’s “moonshot factory.” 

With Project Suncatcher, Google plans to explore how a network of solar-powered satellites, equipped with Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) AI chips, could use the power of the Sun — in order to provide the power to scale AI computing in space. 

Google released some early research on the project this week, in which Google concluded that the core concepts of space-based machine learning compute “are not precluded by fundamental physics or insurmountable economic barriers,” but engineering challenges must be overcome like thermal management, high-bandwidth ground communications, and on-orbit system reliability.

Google is working with Planet to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 that will test how its models and TPU hardware operate in space, and also validate the use of optical inter-satellite links for distributed ML tasks.

Planet said in a statement that working toward complex, high-performance computation in space is in line with its technology development roadmap for the recently announced Owl mission. The Project Suncatcher prototypes will use the same satellite bus.