Overview
- Google confirmed late Thursday that its MVP prototype satellite, launched on October 1, 2026, deployed to low‑Earth orbit and its four Trillium tensor processing units (TPUs) are functioning as designed.
- The refrigerator‑sized craft carries four TPUs that together match roughly one terrestrial server and run on about 1 kilowatt of solar power, so the team limits processing to roughly 15‑minute inference bursts to prevent overheating.
- Extensive ground work at UC Davis exposed the chips to proton‑beam radiation simulating more than five years in orbit and showed the TPUs held up well enough to justify this first in‑space test.
- Google plans two purpose‑built follow‑on satellites in 2027 to test high‑bandwidth laser links between spacecraft and designs for continuous operation rather than bursty runs.
- Major hurdles remain before any commercial orbital data centers are feasible, including reliable long‑duration cooling in vacuum, radiation‑induced errors, orbital debris and traffic, hardware obsolescence, and the steep launch cadence and cost reductions needed to scale.