Google Satellite Sends First Haiku from Orbit

On October 31, 2026, Google announced that its experimental satellite data center, Suncatcher, received its first haiku written from orbit. The satellite, launched in early October, responded to a request from a ground station to write a haiku on behalf of the TPU located in Earth's orbit. Travis Beals, Senior Director of Google's Paradigms of Intelligence research group, noted that after completing machine learning tests, the satellite reached the 'Hello World' milestone by sending a response from space.

During the satellite's pass over Svalbard, Norway, the aviation AI model generated the following lines: 'Blue marble surface below, Data flows with silent grace, Starlight feeds my core.' According to Google, the cost of creating these approximately 20 tokens via the Google Cloud API would be approximately $0.000012, based on a price of $0.15 per million incoming and $0.60 per million outgoing tokens. Considering the satellite weighs about 500 kg and the launch price is approximately $7,000 per kilogram, it can be stated that the haiku came at a very high cost. Google adjusted its calculations, stating that if the cost of launching a satellite to low orbit can be reduced to $200 per kg, the launch costs could match the current electricity expenses for ground data centers in the US, which range from $570 to $3,000 per kW per year.

Google forecasts that SpaceX will be able to achieve this cost by 2035, and the company considers it prudent to test the concept in advance. After writing the haiku, Beals reported that further tests are planned using thematic limericks and reports on the technical condition of cargo systems. Performance tests of the TPU under thermal stress and radiation are also planned. Next year, Google plans to test a pair of interconnected satellites. Instead of large satellites, the company intends to launch a constellation of smaller satellites that will interact with each other.