First Two Satellites of Pazhou Space Computing Constellation Enter Orbit
On October 14, 2026, at 19:40 Beijing time, the first two satellites of the "Pazhou Space Intelligent Computing Constellation" lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center aboard a LandSpace Zhuque-2 improved carrier rocket. Developed with support from Guangzhou's Haizhu District, the satellites entered orbit successfully and became Guangdong's first "satellite-model integrated" satellite group.
The "satellite-model integration" approach refers to deploying multimodal large models on in-orbit computing satellites and completing commercial task verification, allowing users to "ask a satellite a question and get analysis results back from orbit." The launch marks an early step for Haizhu's space computing industry.
Computing satellites bring computing capacity into orbit, reducing the space and temperature constraints faced by ground-based computing centers. China currently has more than 640 civil and commercial remote-sensing satellites in orbit, the world's second-largest fleet, generating PB-level raw observation data daily. However, less than 5% of that data is transmitted back to Earth due to downlink bandwidth limitations. To tackle the challenge of processing satellite data in orbit, Haizhu District set up a dedicated track in the fourth Pazhou Algorithm Contest in September 2025, turning real business scenarios such as satellite image object recognition and target monitoring into contest tasks. More than 900 teams worldwide entered, and the Yuxing Xinghe team used the contest to deploy its self-developed multimodal large model on the in-orbit computing satellite, completing commercial task verification and becoming the industry's first team to do so.
The full "Pazhou Space Intelligent Computing Constellation" is planned to consist of 24 computing satellites, with the goal of supporting stable 7×24-hour on-orbit operation and shifting from short-term in-orbit validation to long-term in-orbit services. The project has achieved industry-first advances in routine operation of space computing payloads, laser-based high-bandwidth inter-satellite and satellite-ground communication, and distributed computing across satellites for Earth-facing services. Haizhu District plans to put more than 24 satellites into commercial use within three years and build China's largest space computing cluster in terms of computing capacity, along with a 10-billion-yuan space computing industry chain.
