Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL) shares rose 3.18% to $18.17 in premarket trading Friday, extending a 7.57% gain on Thursday, when the stock closed at $17.62. At Friday’s premarket price, the shares were approximately 10.7% above their September 18 close of $16.42.

The move followed Google’s announcement that its Project Suncatcher prototype is scheduled to launch next week aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 rideshare mission, a launch format that carries multiple satellites to orbit on a single rocket. The flight will mark the project’s first in-orbit test of Google Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), the company’s custom chips for artificial intelligence workloads.

The development represents a new flight milestone rather than a new partnership between Google and Planet. Planet first disclosed its involvement in Project Suncatcher on November 4, 2025.

Google’s Orbital Computing Test

Project Suncatcher is designed to evaluate how Google’s AI chips perform during launch and in orbit. The prototype satellite was built with Planet’s assistance and will carry Google TPUs into space, where the hardware will be exposed to radiation and temperature fluctuations that do not occur under ordinary conditions on Earth. How commercially produced AI hardware holds up in that environment is the central question the mission is built to answer.

Google announced the planned test in a post on X on September 24, 2026:

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. ⬇️ — Google (@Google) September 24, 2026

Google conducted several ground tests before the planned launch. Engineers subjected the satellite to vibration testing designed to simulate the conditions of a rocket launch. Separately, researchers at UC Davis exposed Trillium TPUs to a proton beam to assess their resistance to radiation.

The radiation tests indicated that the chips could withstand radiation levels exceeding those expected during a five-year mission in space. Google also tested a heat-pipe and radiator cooling system. The equipment is intended to manage heat in orbit, where there is no air to carry heat away as it does on Earth.

A larger demonstration is planned for 2027, when Google expects to launch two satellites together. That phase will test whether laser links between the satellites can support an operational computing cluster in space. With the Transporter-18 launch scheduled for next week, the near-term checkpoints are the launch itself and the in-orbit performance data that follows, ahead of that two-satellite phase.

Planet’s Suncatcher Involvement

Planet announced its role in the project on November 4, 2025. At that time, the company said it planned to 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 — the bus being the core spacecraft platform that carries a mission’s payload — connecting the mission to hardware the company already builds.

Google’s latest announcement therefore adds a near-term flight milestone ahead of the planned 2027 two-satellite demonstration. It does not indicate that the companies have entered into a new agreement.

Planet has also reported other developments this week. The company Amazon.ia, 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 expected to roughly double its satellite manufacturing capacity, which analysts say could help convert the company’s approximately $815 million backlog into revenue.

Planet reported earnings per share of $0.02 for the latest quarter, exceeding estimates, while revenue increased 58.2% year over year. Wall Street’s consensus rating on PL is 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 previous 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Original source: https://coincentral.com/planet-labs-pl-stock-rises-as-googles-suncatcher-nears-first-orbital-test