TLDR
- Planet Labs (PL) shares rose 3.18% to $18.17 premarket Friday, building on a 7.57% jump Thursday.
- Google says its Project Suncatcher prototype will fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission next week for its first in-orbit test.
- Planet disclosed its Suncatcher role back in November 2025; this week’s news is a new flight milestone, not a new partnership.
- Ground tests showed Google’s Trillium TPUs can handle radiation levels beyond a five-year space mission.
- A two-satellite laser-link demonstration is planned for 2027 to test space-based computing clusters.
Planet Labs (PL) stock climbed 3.18% to $18.17 in premarket trading Friday. That follows a 7.57% surge Thursday, when shares closed at $17.62.
The rally is tied to Google’s Project Suncatcher, an effort to test AI chips in orbit. Google said Wednesday that the first orbital test is set for next week.
At Friday’s premarket price, Planet was trading about 10.7% above its September 18 close of $16.42. That puts the stock on pace for a strong weekly gain if the level holds into regular trading.
It’s worth noting this isn’t a new Google-Planet deal. Planet first revealed its role in Suncatcher back in November 2025. What’s new is that Google is moving from lab testing to an actual flight.
What Google Is Testing in Orbit
The Suncatcher satellite will launch aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission. It was built with Planet’s help and will carry Google Tensor Processing Units into space.
After years of research, Project Suncatcher is scheduled to embark on its first test in orbit, launching a prototype satellite to evaluate how Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) perform in space. Learn more about the science behind this moonshot. ⬇️ https://t.co/GGTH2tZOHZ
— Google (@Google) September 24, 2026
The goal is to see how the chips hold up during launch and in orbit. Space brings extreme radiation and temperature swings that hardware on Earth never faces.
Google already ran ground tests to prepare. Engineers put the satellite through vibration testing to mimic a rocket launch, and separately blasted Trillium TPUs with a proton beam at UC Davis.
Those radiation tests suggested the chips could survive more radiation than they’d receive over five years in space. Google also tested a heat pipe and radiator cooling system, since there’s no air in orbit to carry heat away like on Earth.
A bigger test comes in 2027, when Google plans to launch two satellites together. That phase will check whether laser links between satellites can support a working computing cluster in space.
Planet’s Role Goes Back to 2025
Planet first announced its Suncatcher involvement on November 4, 2025. At the time, the company said it would deploy two prototype satellites by early 2027 to test high-bandwidth links between them.
Planet also said the project uses the same satellite-bus design as its Owl technology line, tying the mission directly to hardware it already builds.
So Google’s latest update adds a near-term milestone ahead of that 2027 phase. It doesn’t signal a brand new deal between the two companies.
Beyond Suncatcher, Planet has had a busy stretch. The company also launched Amazon.ia this week, a satellite-data initiative backed by more than $14 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to track biodiversity in the Amazon.
Planet’s Berlin facility is also expected to roughly double its satellite manufacturing capacity, a move analysts say could help convert the company’s roughly $815 million backlog into revenue.
On the earnings side, Planet posted $0.02 EPS last quarter, beating estimates, with revenue up 58.2% year over year. Wall Street’s consensus rating on PL is currently Hold, with an average price target of $32.77.
Planet’s tokenized stock product, PLon, was trading at $18.28 as of 7:08 a.m. ET Friday, up 12.74% over the prior 24 hours on CoinMarketCap.
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