Google's Gemma 4 in orbit sends first AI haiku from space

Project Suncatcher is Google's effort to move AI computation into orbit, and the haiku exchange is its first public demonstration that a model can answer a prompt from space. After launch, the team spent several weeks powering up the host computer and the housing that holds the TPU before running the test. The satellite passed near Svalbard, Norway, when the generated verse came down to the ground station.

The experiment did not stop at one poem. Google says it ran further prompts asking for humorous space-themed fixed-form verse and for reports on the satellite system's technical status. That suggests the company is probing not just whether the model answers, but whether the onboard hardware can be queried like a normal computing node.

The harder questions are physical. Google plans experiments to evaluate thermal stress and radiation tolerance, since space exposes processors to temperature swings and radiation unlike conditions on the ground. Whether AI chips can compute continuously there is central to the idea. A second experiment, planned for 2027, would interconnect two satellites — a step beyond the single-satellite test confirmed here.