Subject: New Moonshot!
Maybe they should rename it to a sunshot ;-)
Artificial intelligence is a foundational technology that could help us tackle humanity's greatest challenges. To unlock its fullest potential, Alphabet-GOOGL is announcing Project Suncatcher, their new research moonshot to one day scale machine learning in space. Google is exploring how an interconnected network of solar-powered satellites, equipped with the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) AI chips, could harness the full power of the Sun. Inspired by other Google moonshots like autonomous vehicles and quantum computing, Alphabet has begun work on the foundational work needed to one day make this future possible. Their next step is a learning mission in partnership with Planet to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027 that will test their hardware in orbit, laying the groundwork for a future era of massively-scaled computation in space.