Google Turns Orbital TPUs Into an AI-Infrastructure Escape Hatch

SpaceX is targeting October 1, 2026, for the Transporter-18 rideshare from Vandenberg, with Project Suncatcher M1 listed in the deployment sequence as a Planet Labs-manifested payload. Google says the mission will gather in-orbit data on TPU behavior under launch stress, radiation, and thermal extremes. The larger signal is that AI infrastructure bottlenecks are beginning to push hyperscalers beyond terrestrial data-center assumptions and into space-power, launch-cadence, and orbital-network experiments.