Google Announces its Project Suncatcher: A Research Moonshot Aimed at Scaling Machine Learning Compute in Space
The California-based tech giant – Google has now announced its next big initiative, and this is about the Project Suncatcher. As per what the brand notes, this is a research moonshot that aims in scaling machine learning compute in space.
Read more about it below.
Google’s Project Suncatcher Announced
Artificial intelligence (AI) has already proved to be a foundational technology which can help humanity address its greatest challenges, and Google is preparing to unlock its full potential in a new field. As mentioned above, the brand has now announced Project Suncatcher and it is Google’s new research moonshot which aims to scale machine learning in space one day. With this future as the goal, Project Suncatcher is trying to explore how solar-powered satellites that are equipped with the brand’s own TPU AI chips (Tensor Processing Unit Artificial Intelligence chip) can be used to harness the Sun’s full power.
Speaking more, the Project Suncatcher takes inspiration from the brand’s other projects like quantum computing and autonomous vehicles, and Google has already laid the foundational work to possibly achieve it in the future. The approach the brand has taken towards satellite constellation design, communication, and control, as well as the results from radiation testing of the Google TPUs are believed to aid in successfully fulfilling the goal of Project Suncatcher.
As the next step, the brand has also decided to partner with Planet Labs and launch two prototype satellites in early 2027. These satellites will be launched to test Google’s hardware technology in the space orbit, which will thereby provide the groundwork for Project Suncatcher and help in availing ‘a future era with massively-scaled computation in outer space’.
In related news, just recently, Google also introduced the ability to create presentations in Gemini via Canvas. Do check it out.
