SpaceX launches Crew-13 to ISS in record time as Google sends AI chips into orbit

SpaceX pulled off a high-stakes double header on Thursday, launching a four-person crew to the International Space Station in record-breaking time, just as another of its rockets carried Google's first AI chips into orbit.

The Crew-13 mission took off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft, named Grace, docked with the International Space Station (ISS) just 7 hours and 55 minutes later. It is the fastest-ever trip to the station by an American spacecraft, shaving nearly five hours off the previous US record.

While the astronauts settled into their new home, another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Tucked inside was a solar-powered satellite carrying Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips. The launch marks the first real-world orbital test of Project Suncatcher, Google's long-term research initiative to build data centres in space.

The race to the space station

The Crew-13 flight went ahead after a three-week delay to repair a leak in the capsule's fuel system. Heavy clouds initially threatened the countdown on Thursday morning, but the weather cleared just in time for the late-morning liftoff.

"Thanks for an amazing ride," Commander Jessica Watkins radioed to mission control after reaching orbit. Watkins, a geologist who previously worked with NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, is the first Black woman to lead an orbital spaceflight.

The rest of the crew are making their first flights into space. They include NASA pilot Luke Delaney, a retired marine; Canadian Space Agency colonel Joshua Kutryk; and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, a former submariner. The crew will spend six months aboard the ISS, where they will conduct scientific research, including studies on human stem cells and crop production in microgravity.

SpaceX's director of NASA science and Dragon programmes, Julianna Scheiman, said orbital mechanics and physics had aligned perfectly to allow the record-breaking sub-eight-hour transit. "We got lucky this time," Scheiman said. "The space station was in an opportune spot in space."

Putting Google's AI in orbit

Hours after the crewed launch, SpaceX successfully deployed Google's prototype compute satellite in California. Built by Planet Labs, the satellite is designed to test whether Google's AI chips can withstand the hostile environment of low Earth orbit.

Google is looking to space to solve some of the massive infrastructure constraints facing artificial intelligence on Earth. In orbit, solar-powered satellites have access to almost constant sunlight, generating up to eight times more solar power than they can on the ground. Space-based processing could also bypass the growing political and environmental backlash over the heavy energy and water usage of terrestrial data centres.

"Our team has confirmed contact with the satellite and it is operating as expected," Travis Beals, senior director of Project Suncatcher, wrote in a blog post.

The test is a cautious one. Because of power and thermal constraints on the satellite, Google will run the TPU chip in short 15-minute bursts. Google researchers have already tested the hardware in particle accelerators on Earth to simulate space radiation, and they remain confident the chips can run large workloads over a typical five-year satellite lifespan.

What happens next?

This initial launch is just the beginning. Google and Planet Labs plan to launch two more sophisticated, purpose-built satellites next year that will attempt to communicate and coordinate workloads using laser links.

Eventually, Google envisions an orbital data centre consisting of 81 satellites flying in close formation and processing tasks in parallel. However, the infrastructure required to scale up space computing does not yet exist.

According to a Google research paper, SpaceX's massive Starship vehicle would need to launch roughly 1,800 times over the next decade to carry the required tonnage into orbit at an economically viable cost. That would require Starship to fly around 180 times a year—a massive scale-up for a rocket that has yet to achieve high-frequency flight.

The competition in orbit is already heating up. SpaceX, in which Google is a major investor, has announced plans to build its own orbital data centres in partnership with Tesla. SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell has said the company aims to deploy its own "supercompute in space" by 2027.