Google Suncatcher’s prototype space data center is online and communicating with the ground after launching earlier this month alongside more than 100 other spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The satellite, which carries a single Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) and generates up to 1 kW of electricity, is intended to pave the way for future networks of close-flying satellites performing large inference workloads in orbit. However, the power demands of the TPU mean it can only turn on for about twenty minutes at a time, complicating the already tricky business of space-to-ground communications.
Google said it tested the model with these space-themed limericks (they should have sent a poet?) and, perhaps more importantly, the company asked the spacecraft to report on the orbital conditions around the satellite.
