# Why Google's space computer stops every 15 minutes Published: 2026-09-25 Space is 270 degrees below zero, so why does Google's first orbital AI satellite have to switch its chips off every 15 minutes? Project Suncatcher launches four TPUs on October 1, and the problem is not the rocket or the radiation. Plus Oracle's New Mexico data center with no power, two identical iPhones with different encryption in the UK, and F-Droid 2.0. Verdict: NEEDS REVIEW. Canonical: https://thedailydiff.dev/video/2026-09-25-suncatcher-heat/ ## What this video covers - Freezing space, overheating chips? - Why is freezing space bad at cooling? - Who named a space data center MVP? - Why is Google launching anyway? - Why is Oracle paying for a site with no power? ## Chapters - 0:00 Freezing space, overheating chips? - 0:30 Why is freezing space bad at cooling? - 1:28 Who named a space data center MVP? - 1:46 Why is Google launching anyway? - 2:10 Why is Oracle paying for a site with no power? - 2:36 Why do identical iPhones get different locks? - 3:14 What did F-Droid 2.0 actually ship? - 3:46 The number I promised: how long can it run? - 4:21 Verdict: would I ship it? ## Transcript ### Freezing space, overheating chips? 0:00 You'd think space is the perfect place to cool a computer. It's two hundred seventy below zero. Google's engineers say cooling is exactly the problem. In this video, three questions. Why is freezing space so bad at cooling? Why is Google launching anyway? And why do identical iPhones in London get different locks? And there's one number about Google's test satellite that tells you who's 0:21 winning, physics or Google. Google's own blog post leaves it out. I'll get to it at the end. It's Friday, September twenty-fifth, and this is The Daily Diff. Here's the thing about cold. ### Why is freezing space bad at cooling? 0:31 On Earth, air or water touches a hot chip and carries the heat away. In a vacuum, there's nothing to touch. So heat has exactly one exit. It has to glow away as infrared light, from a radiator. And glowing is slow. A perfect radiator at room temperature sheds about four hundred sixty watts per square metre. The space station has six radiator panels, each about as long as a tennis court. 0:54 All of them together dump about seventy kilowatts. Hacker News got there first. The third top comment under Google's announcement is one line. How are they solving the heat dissipation issues? Another commenter was stuck on the branding, because calling a space project a moonshot is, quote, very confusing. Now, Google's current TPU pod is about nine thousand chips on close to 1:16 ten megawatts. Cooling that the space station way takes about a hundred and forty space stations. Which explains a word in Google's post. Each future satellite carries dozens of chips. Not thousands. Dozens. Meanwhile, the humans. ### Who named a space data center MVP? 1:29 Sundar Pichai announced it as one small step for TPUs. Elon Musk quoted him with two rocket emojis, which is fair, because it's his rocket. It flies on October first. The satellite is the size of a fridge, and Google named it MVP. For once, an honest product name. So why launch at all? ### Why is Google launching anyway? 1:47 Because heat is half the problem, and power is the other half. In the right orbit a panel sits in near-constant sunlight, and Google says it makes up to eight times more power than on the ground. Last year's paper bets launches drop below two hundred dollars a kilo by the mid twenty-thirties. At that price, Google says, the rocket costs about what a data center on Earth pays for electricity. ### Why is Oracle paying for a site with no power? 2:10 And on Earth, power has become a permission problem. Oracle's New Mexico campus for OpenAI, called Project Jupiter, ran into permit delays and local opposition. So Oracle sent the developer a force majeure notice over the power. The Financial Times says it still owes the investors for up to three years, power or not. One Hacker News commenter put it best. Soon it'll be cheaper to shoot your data center into space than get it past the 2:34 county board. Now, two iPhones in London. ### Why do identical iPhones get different locks? 2:37 Same model, same iCloud, same bill. One owner has Advanced Data Protection, so Apple can't read her backups or photos. The other can't even turn it on. Apple pulled the feature for new UK users in February twenty twenty-five, after a secret order under the Investigatory Powers Act. It's called a Technical Capability Notice, which is British for please build us a way in. And the order is a secret everyone knows. 2:58 Apple is gagged from even confirming it exists, and last week asked the tribunal to lift the gag. Lawyers for Liberty and Privacy International called the secrecy farcical, and one compared it to the emperor's new clothes. Meanwhile, the blog's author wrote to the Home Secretary before publishing. No reply. And one straight ship to end on. ### What did F-Droid 2.0 actually ship? 3:16 F-Droid two point oh is out, the biggest update the open source app store has ever had, rolling out over the coming weeks. One commenter noticed the download page still serves the old version. It's rebuilt in Kotlin Compose, and updates now install in the background by default. Installs finally feel like the Play Store's, thanks, in F-Droid's own words, to pressure from the EU's Digital Markets Act. And the very same page opens with a banner. 3:41 F-Droid is under threat. Google is changing the way you install apps. Which brings me to the number I promised. ### The number I promised: how long can it run? 3:47 Google's test satellite has four chips and about one kilowatt of sunlight, roughly a hair dryer. And according to Ars Technica, citing The New York Times, it can run Gemini for about fifteen minutes. Then the chips shut down and wait for the radiators to catch up. Not the radiation, which they survived in a proton beam. Not the rocket, which they survived on a shake table. The heat. So right now, physics is winning. 4:09 Google's first space data center works in shifts, with naps. If you'd rather read this than hear me say it, the diff lands in your inbox every morning, free at the daily diff dot dev, link below. ### Verdict: would I ship it? 4:21 So, today's verdict on Google's space data center. NEEDS REVIEW. I'd ship the test flight tomorrow. But four chips that nap every fifteen minutes are an experiment, not a data center, and I'd send that headline back for review. And that's the diff for today. I'm Niko from Axrisi. Merge responsibly. ## Sources - [Google — Behind Project Suncatcher](https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-research/google-project-suncatcher-facts/) — blog.google - [Ars Technica — Suncatcher test launches October 1](https://arstechnica.com/google/2026/09/googles-first-suncatcher-orbital-data-center-test-launches-october-1/) — arstechnica.com - [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/technology/google-suncatcher-ai-data-center-space.html) — www.nytimes.com - [Google Research — the 2025 Suncatcher paper](https://research.google/blog/exploring-a-space-based-scalable-ai-infrastructure-system-design/) — research.google - [NASA — ISS thermal control (70 kW)](https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/473486main_iss_atcs_overview.pdf) — www.nasa.gov - [Google — Ironwood TPU (9,216 chips, ~10 MW)](https://blog.google/products/google-cloud/ironwood-tpu-age-of-inference/) — blog.google - [Sundar Pichai on X](https://x.com/sundarpichai/status/2103209164072010051) — x.com - [Hacker News (196 pts)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49830606) — news.ycombinator.com - [Financial Times — Oracle on the hook to pay data centre investors](https://www.ft.com/content/a96bf05a-a299-4d6a-a753-b298dd0f4016) — www.ft.com - [macanorak — Two-tier encryption in the UK](https://macanorak.com/two-tier-encryption-in-the-uk/) — macanorak.com - [Hacker News (468 pts)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49828731) — news.ycombinator.com - [F-Droid 2.0](https://f-droid.org/2026/09/24/f-droid-2.0-a-new-chapter-for-android-freedom.html) — f-droid.org - [Hacker News (1,280 pts)](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831968) — news.ycombinator.com