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

If SpaceX can launch 1,800 Starships, and researchers nail gnarly networking, design and formation flying problems...

The short version

• 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.

What happened

In its announcement of a successful Suncatcher launch, Google linked to its own peer-reviewed researc h 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.

Why it matters

Google’s researchers also note that SpaceX has managed to reduce the cost to launch a kilogram into orbit by 20 percent after every doubling of the cumulative mass it launched.

Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at The Register — Networks via the links above and below.