Future designs of our satellites will each carry dozens of TPU chips while orbiting the Earth in clusters. To maintain the bandwidth necessary to process AI, every satellite has to know both its own position and where it sits relative to its neighbors. To do this, the satellites will communicate via lasers.

The technology in space already exists, but most state-of-the-art systems are optimized for low bandwidth across large distances, whereas our lasers need to operate at very high bandwidth over extremely short distances. Maintaining the necessary connection requires extraordinary precision, similar to hitting a coin-size target from miles away while both points are in motion. We’ll test our work on this in 2027 when we put two satellites in orbit.

Exploring space as a viable location for scalable AI compute won’t happen all at once. It takes methodical engineering, starting with proving our hardware can handle the physical and unpredictable realities of operating in orbit. This first launch is about seeing what works, identifying points of failure, and applying those findings to future missions.

Every transformative technology we’ve built at Google began with an audacious goal — and the discipline of working backward to solve hard problems all along the way. As our latest moonshot heads to the launchpad, our team is excited to share what we learn and the science driving this work forward.