Google to launch Project Suncatcher MVP satellite with four TPUs on October 1

Google announced on September 24 the launch plan for MVP, the first experimental satellite of its orbital AI compute initiative. MVP will lift off on October 1 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base as part of the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The refrigerator-sized spacecraft holds four of Google's custom Trillium TPU AI accelerators and roughly 1 kilowatt of solar power, enough for a microwave or hair dryer.

The satellite platform comes from imagery company Planet Labs, with Google integrating its chips into an existing Planet-built spacecraft rather than waiting for a custom build originally scheduled for 2027. MVP is designed for one year of operation and will deorbit within approximately six years. Ground testing included radiation campaigns at UC Davis's Crocker Nuclear Laboratory using a 67 MeV proton beam, where Trillium TPUs survived a cumulative 15 krad(Si) total ionizing dose, roughly 20 times the 750 rad(Si) requirement for a five-year mission. High Bandwidth Memory was the most sensitive component, showing irregularities after 2 krad(Si), still nearly three times the mission requirement.

Thermal management is the central engineering constraint. Google uses aluminum and copper heat pipes leading to a radiator that dissipates heat into space, allowing approximately 15 minutes of TPU operation per cycle before shutdown for cooling. The concept traces back to a proposal by Google VP Blaise Agüera y Arcas roughly three years ago, approved by co-founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai in May 2025. The next milestone is a 2027 dual-satellite prototype validating optical inter-satellite links, with eventual constellations of more than 80 satellites under study.