Google's first prototype data centre satellite is working in orbit, and its first job was to write a haiku. The satellite, part of a Google research project called Suncatcher, launched earlier this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket alongside more than 100 other spacecraft. It carries a single Google AI chip, known as a Tensor Processing Unit, running Google DeepMind's Gemma 4 model.

After about three weeks of checks, engineers sent their first prompt this week, asking the model to write a haiku about being in space. It obliged with three lines about the blue planet below and starlight powering its core.

The idea behind Suncatcher is that AI computing could one day run in orbit, where satellites can draw on near-constant sunlight for power. This first satellite is a small test. It generates up to 1 kilowatt of power, and the AI chip uses so much of it that it can only run for about 20 minutes at a time, which also makes communicating with the ground harder.

Google says the satellite is working normally. The real test is radiation. In space, radiation can flip individual bits in a computer's memory, quietly corrupting data without setting off normal warning systems.

Google has tested its chips in particle accelerators on the ground, which suggested radiation would matter little for running AI models but more for training them, and it now gets to check that in real conditions. If this chip holds up, Google plans to launch two more satellites in 2027 with more power and laser links between them, so they can share work like one larger system.

Other companies, including SpaceX, are also working on space data centres. All of them depend on launches becoming much cheaper. In a study published this month, Google's researchers estimated SpaceX would need to fly its Starship rocket around 1,800 times to bring launch costs down far enough.

TechCrunch's Tim Fernholz reported that the satellite is online and called Suncatcher a classic Google moonshot, aimed at infrastructure that could be economical in the 2030s. Google Research sets out the case for space-based AI computing. TechCrunch also noted the timing: Alphabet's shares fell this week after it reported that AI was slowing growth in its search business.

A satellite writing poetry is a fun headline, but the serious point is how badly the world needs more computing power. Big tech is spending trillions of rands on data centres this year, and is now testing whether it can put them in orbit to escape limits on land, power and cooling on Earth.

Space data centres are still a long way off. They depend on cheap, frequent launches, which in turn depend on Starship, the rocket that only reached orbit for the first time last month. For South African founders, the nearer opportunity is on the ground.

The same demand that pushes Google to experiment in space is why factory-built data centres could be built and sold in Africa right now.

You might also like our piece on data centres as war targets, Musk's SpaceX share pledge, and the Jetson ONE flying machine.

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