Planet Labs PBC (NYSE: PL) shares climbed 3.18% to $18.17 as of 7:18 a.m. ET Friday, extending a rally after Google said Project Suncatcher is preparing for its first in-orbit test next week. PL closed Thursday at $17.62, up 7.57%.
The latest development is not a newly announced Google-Planet partnership. Planet disclosed its involvement in Project Suncatcher in November 2025. The fresh company-specific development is Google’s move from terrestrial hardware qualification toward a planned in-orbit test next week, creating a near-term flight milestone before a more complex two-satellite demonstration planned for 2027.
At Friday’s premarket price, Planet shares were about 10.7% above their Sept. 18 closing price of $16.42, putting the stock on course for a double-digit weekly advance if that premarket level carries into regular trading.
Meanwhile, Planet Labs Tokenized Stock (Ondo) was also higher. PLon was trading at exactly $18.28 at 7:08 a.m. ET Friday, up 12.74% over the previous 24 hours on CoinMarketCap. The tokenized product’s 24-hour percentage change is not directly comparable to PL’s pre-market move because the two figures use different trading windows.
Google Is Taking TPU Testing Beyond the Lab
Google said the first Project Suncatcher orbital test will fly aboard SpaceX’s upcoming Transporter-18 rideshare mission. The prototype satellite mission was developed in partnership with Planet and is intended to collect data on how Google Tensor Processing Units perform through launch and in the radiation and thermal environment of space. Google expects its first TPUs to reach orbit next week.
The flight follows a series of ground tests to reduce hardware risk before launch. Google said the satellite underwent vibration testing designed to reproduce rocket-launch conditions. At the same time, Trillium TPUs were tested with a proton beam at the University of California, Davis’ Crocker Nuclear Laboratory. According to Google, those radiation tests indicated the chips could withstand a total ionizing dose exceeding what they would receive during a five-year space mission.
The company has also tested a cooling system combining heat pipes and radiators in a thermal-vacuum chamber. Unlike terrestrial data centers, electronics in orbit cannot rely on airflow to remove heat, making thermal management one of the engineering questions the orbital demonstration aims to address.
The next phase is scheduled for 2027, when Google plans to put two satellites into orbit to test the high-bandwidth laser links needed for spacecraft operating as a coordinated computing cluster.
Planet’s Suncatcher Role Was Disclosed in 2025
Planet originally announced its Project Suncatcher participation on Nov. 4, 2025, saying it would use its spacecraft-design and operations capabilities to support Google’s effort to explore scalable machine-learning computing in space.
Planet also said the program uses the same satellite-bus architecture associated with its Owl technology roadmap, giving the project a direct connection to spacecraft technology already under development at the company.