Google's Project Suncatcher satellite sends back its first AI-generated poem from orbit
First response from the Project Suncatcher prototype satellite
Google's Project Suncatcher prototype satellite, launched October 1, has completed commissioning and reached a "Hello World" milestone: the first AI response from a data-center-class TPU in space. During a ground-station pass over Svalbard, Norway, Google uplinked a prompt to the onboard Gemma 4 model asking for a haiku about being in space, and the downlinked poem confirmed success. Next come thermal and radiation stress tests, ahead of twin interconnected satellites planned for 2027.
Our chips have officially earned their space wings — an important achievement on the long road ahead for this cosmic moonshot.
- loufe
This was a completely vapid article. I expected some technical details at least, but instead it's an LLM generated poem confirming it worked in a short interval, which nobody doubts it would. All eyes are on long term heat dissipation and the impact of radiation and success of radiation hardening meterials and processes.
- 6thbit
So their weights are just floating up there?
I suppose it’s beyond hard anyone would hijack their satellite but still. Wonder if they put any physical security on it anyway.
- aftbit
Putting AI in space is a silly idea. How do you cool it reliably? How do you handle rad-hardness? How do you even get the gear up there? It's one of the most expensive places to put mass.
Using geothermal power or floating solar arrays in the ocean makes way more sense. It's much easier to access, you have water for a heat sink, and you're far away from anyone or anything that would really care.
More controversially, if geothermal or solar doesn't pan out, you could power it via nuclear microreactors (just what I want floating in my world's ocean) or gas that would otherwise be flared off from a deep sea oil well (CO2 non-withstanding).
- 27183
Is this the piece of junk that can only run for 15min at a time before it overheats? They probably could have done some more analysis before launching it into space.. Like put the radiator in a vacuum chamber maybe? Or do some thermal modelling? Or did they know it would do this and launch it anyway? Would love to know why.
- smallerize
I still can't think of a use case for this besides making it difficult to shut down illegal AIs.