Google to develop satellite system to supply solar energy in orbit.
Google plans to establish a satellite system in Earth’s orbit to harness solar energy to power its data centers, as detailed in the company’s blog.
The company sees artificial intelligence as a transformative technology with the potential to change the world. However, reaching its full potential requires considerable computational power.
“The sun is the solar system’s primary energy source, emitting 100 trillion times more energy than all of humanity’s total output. In the right orbit, solar panels will be eight times more efficient than on Earth, producing near-continuous energy and reducing the need for batteries,” the company claims.
In the future, space could be the perfect place to expand artificial intelligence, prompting Google to launch an ambitious research project called Suncatcher. The effort involves the creation of a compact group of solar-powered satellites powered by the company’s tensor processing units (TPUs) and interconnected through optical communication channels.
The proposed system operates in sun-synchronous low-Earth orbit, where the device is exposed to near-continuous sunlight and can maximize energy collection.
assignment
Google highlighted several challenges that must be overcome to bring the Suncatcher project to fruition.
Securing intersatellite communication channels
Large-scale machine learning workloads require tasks to be distributed across many accelerators with high bandwidth and low latency.
To achieve performance comparable to terrestrial data centers, communication channels between satellites must support tens of terabits per second. This can be achieved by High density multichannel transceiver and wavelength division multiplexing and spatial multiplexingaccording to Google experts.
Achieving the required bandwidth requires levels thousands of times higher than the typical received power of traditional long-haul systems.
“Since the energy input is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, this problem can be overcome by launching satellites in very dense formations,” the blog said.
The team has already started testing this approach. The laboratory prototype achieved data transmission speeds of 800 Gbps in each direction.
satellite management
High-bandwidth intersatellite communication channels require very dense device placement.
Experts have developed models to analyze the orbital dynamics of such star clusters. They show that when satellites are placed only a few hundred meters apart, simple maneuvers are required to maintain a stable position.
Radiation resistance of TPU
How to ensure resilience M.L. The accelerator must withstand the conditions of low Earth orbit. The company has tested Trillium chips with promising results.
High-bandwidth memory subsystem ionizing dose The level was nearly three times higher than expected.
Experts did not observe any significant failures.
economic viability
Previously, high launch costs were the main obstacle to building large-scale space systems. Data analysis suggests launch prices could fall to less than $200 per kg by the mid-2030s.
At such rates, space-based data centers could become economically comparable to equivalent terrestrial data centers.
early release
Google emphasized that first-order calculations do not contradict fundamental physical laws and do not face insurmountable economic barriers.
“However, significant engineering challenges remain, including thermal control, high-bandwidth ground communications, and orbital system reliability,” the blog said.
Google has begun addressing these issues with training missions in partnership with Planet, and plans to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027. The experiment will test the functionality of models and equipment in space.
Back in May 2025, China launched 12 satellites as part of a project to build a network of orbiting supercomputers.
What do you want to do? Press CTRL+ENTER
ForkLog: держите руку на пульсе биткоин-индустрии!
