{"id":618388,"date":"2026-10-02T11:20:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T11:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618388\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T11:20:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T11:20:16","slug":"googles-project-suncatcher-prototype-satellite-is-in-orbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/618388\/","title":{"rendered":"Google&#8217;s Project Suncatcher prototype satellite is in orbit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-block-key=\"oa5o2\">Today, our prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher, built in partnership with Planet, launched into orbit aboard the Transporter-18 rideshare mission with SpaceX. Our team has confirmed contact with the satellite and it is operating as expected.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"7qulm\">This is the first step in a <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.google\/innovation-and-ai\/models-and-research\/google-research\/google-project-suncatcher-facts\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">long-term research moonshot<\/a> exploring whether space could one day host scalable machine learning infrastructure. Over the coming weeks, we&#8217;ll gather in-orbit data on how our TPUs handle the physical stress of spaceflight and the radiation and thermal extremes of space.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"41jpo\">Our <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gle\/suncatcher-joule\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">peer-reviewed paper<\/a> is now available in Joule, detailing the research behind this mission.<\/p>\n<p data-block-key=\"96ogk\">Some things can only be tested in space. As we begin our experiments, we&#8217;ll use what we learn to refine our designs, and we&#8217;re excited to share more as the mission unfolds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, our prototype satellite for Project Suncatcher, built in partnership with Planet, launched into orbit aboard the Transporter-18&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,11439,69,145],"class_list":["post-618388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-none","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}