Overview
- Google will send a refrigerator-sized prototype called MVP into low Earth dawn-dusk sun-synchronous orbit on Oct. 1 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 to test four Trillium Tensor Processing Units.
- The satellite will run short Gemini queries and record how the TPUs handle launch vibration, space radiation and heat with a heat‑pipe and radiator cooling design.
- Ground tests at UC Davis exposed the chips to proton beams and heavy vibration and showed radiation tolerance consistent with a five-year mission, though high‑bandwidth memory modules remain a vulnerability.
- Google frames the flight as a learning mission, not a product launch, and plans a 2027 two-satellite test of high-bandwidth laser links before considering larger constellations of roughly 80 satellites.
- Broader viability depends on solving cooling, communications and production scale challenges and on much lower launch costs, a shift Google says could make orbital compute cost‑competitive with ground data centers by the mid-2030s.