A concept photo of space computing network Photo: VCG

China unveiled the Xingyun Constellation Plan on Monday, marking a step from technology testing toward commercial deployment of space-based computing services, state broadcaster China Media Group (CMG) reported. 

The plan was announced at a conference targeting the space cloud industry ecosystem held in Hefei, East China's Anhui Province. The Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and domestic technology companies are jointly developing the network, with the project spanning Chinese-made computing chips and servers, satellite manufacturing and applications. 

The network is designed to serve users worldwide in areas including natural resource monitoring, disaster prevention and emergency response, and the low-altitude economy. Conventional satellites collect data and send it to ground stations for processing. A "space cloud" would allow remote-sensing, communications and computing satellites to work together, so some data could be processed in orbit before being transmitted to Earth, said the CMG report. 

Experts said that the project aims to manage computing capacity in orbit and on the ground as a single pool, with each area handling tasks suited to its capabilities. Users could then access orbital computing power on demand, much as they use cloud services on Earth. 

A separate Chinese project has already demonstrated some of these capabilities. China launched the first 12 satellites of the Three-Body Computing Constellation in May 2025. By February 2026, the project, developed by Zhejiang Lab and its partners, had deployed 10 artificial intelligence models in orbit and established links among six satellites, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

In one test, an onboard remote-sensing model identified stadiums and bridges across a 189-square-kilometer area in Northwest China despite heavy snow cover, said the Xinhua report. China's fleet of high-resolution remote-sensing satellites and its rapidly expanding high-throughput communications satellite capacity provide a foundation for wider deployment of space cloud services, according to CMG.

Global Times