According to Google, in the weeks since launch the team completed its commissioning checklist, including powering up the host and TPU trays and running early machine learning tests. During a ground-station pass the team sent a prompt asking for a haiku about being in space, and the reply came down as the satellite passed over Svalbard, Norway. Telemetry prompts reporting the status of the payload followed.
Project Suncatcher is a long-term research project exploring AI compute in space. Next, Google will test how the TPUs perform under thermal stress and radiation in orbit. According to The Verge, the next milestone is twin interconnected satellites in 2027.
