Google launches first datacenter satellite and research that finds orbiting bit barns can work

Google’s first “Suncatcher” datacenter satellite has made it into space, but the company has cast doubt on whether its orbital ambitions can scale. As The Register reported last week, Project Suncatcher aims to test whether Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) can survive a launch and the harsh environment of space. The Big G hopes to validate theories that the limitless supply of solar energy available in space makes the cost of putting servers into orbit sensible. In its announcement of a successful Suncatcher launch, Google linked to its own peer-reviewed research about the endeavor – which outlines many thorny challenges that must be met to make orbital datacenters fly. The paper, titled “Toward a future space-based, highly scalable AI infrastructure system design,” notes that SpaceX and others have suggested that orbital datacenters become viable when launch costs fall to $200/kg. …