# Google's Suncatcher AI Satellite Sends Back Its First Message: a Haiku Written by Gemma 4

*2026-11-01 07:00 UTC · Technology · 1 min read*

> Google's Suncatcher orbital AI satellite returned a Gemma 4 haiku, a first milestone for space-based compute that only pays off if launch costs fall to about $200/kg.

Google's experimental orbital datacenter satellite Suncatcher, launched into low Earth orbit at the start of October, has sent back its first output: a haiku written by an onboard Gemma 4 model prompted to write as an orbiting TPU. Travis Beals, senior director of Google's Paradigms of Intelligence team, called it a "Hello World" milestone.

The satellite weighs about 500 kg. At a retail launch price of roughly $7,000 per kilogram, the roughly 20-token poem is extremely expensive to deliver. Google estimates that if launch costs fall to $200/kg, orbital compute (about $810-7,500 per kW per year) could match US terrestrial datacenter electricity (about $570-3,000), a price it expects around 2035.

In lab radiation tests, high-bandwidth memory showed irregularities at 2 krad(Si), about three times Google's 750 rad(Si) minimum. Google sees a very low failure risk for inference but says the effect on training needs more study. Next come thermal and radiation testing and a pair of linked satellites next year.

## Sources

- [theregister.com](https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/10/31/googles-ai-satellite-sends-a-very-expensive-haiku-to-earth/5306818)

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TechTools News · https://techtools.cz/tools/news/article/2615-google-s-suncatcher-ai-satellite-sends-back-its-first-message-a-haiku-written
Česká verze: https://techtools.cz/tools/news/clanek/2689-druzice-google-suncatcher-poslala-prvni-zpravu-haiku-napsane-modelem-gemma-4