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Three-Body Computing Constellation

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The Three-Body Computing Constellation (Chinese: 三体计算星座) is a planned network of computing satellites led by Zhejiang Lab, a Zhejiang provincial laboratory in Hangzhou, China. Its satellites carry onboard processors, inter-satellite links and AI models so that satellite data can be processed in orbit instead of being sent to the ground first.[5][7] The first 12 satellites, built by the Chengdu-based commercial satellite company ADA Space (国星宇航, also called Guoxing Aerospace or Adaspace), launched on a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on May 14, 2025.[1][2][5][19] Zhejiang Lab says it aims for about 1,000 satellites by around 2032, with a combined computing capacity of 1,000 peta operations per second (POPS).[3][5][20][22] The May 2025 launch was also the first launch of ADA Space's own "Star-Compute" (星算) program, which plans 2,800 satellites. Some English-language coverage, including SpaceNews, gives that 2,800 figure as the size of the joint constellation.[1][5][26]

Name and organization

Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba Cloud and director of Zhejiang Lab,[10] has said the name comes from the three-body problem in Newtonian mechanics: when three or more bodies interact, their mutual influence becomes very complex. He said the project was meant to bring different organizations together to build space computing.[7] Zhejiang Lab began working on the system with partners in 2023 and announced the project in November 2024.[7] The announcement event, held during the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, was billed as the start of the Three-Body constellation's first batch and the global launch of ADA Space's Star-Compute plan, with ADA Space founder Lu Chuan taking part.[12] According to CGTN, when Wang first proposed the idea in 2023, some people questioned whether there was real demand for computing in space.[24]

Cailian Press describes Zhejiang Lab as a non-profit research institution that does not itself take on satellite manufacturing or commercial operations. The lab supplies computing, communications, model and system technology, while partners handle satellite manufacturing, chips, data and industry services and pursue their own business models; the lab presents the constellation as an international public good.[23] For the first launch, Zhejiang Lab developed the onboard intelligent computers, other space computing hardware and software, and the space-based AI model. ADA Space developed the satellite platform and built the complete satellites.[5] Li Chao of Zhejiang Lab said the first 12-satellite mission took 287 days to complete and nine months from project approval to launch.[21]

The two names are not interchangeable, although the programs overlap. They were launched at the same November 2024 event and shared their first 12 satellites, which ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab developed together, and a November 2024 article listed Zhejiang Lab among the co-initiators of Star-Compute.[5][12][29][30] ADA Space leads Star-Compute, Zhejiang Lab leads the Three-Body constellation, and the two have different stated targets. A Xinhua feature in April 2026, NASASpaceFlight in August 2026 and Cailian Press in October 2026 all described them as separate efforts.[19][26][29]

Three-Body Computing ConstellationStar-Compute (星算)
Lead organizationZhejiang Lab, with partners[5]ADA Space, with partner companies and institutes[14][27]
Stated full sizeAbout 1,000 satellites by around 2032[10][20][24]2,800 satellites: 2,400 for inference and 400 for training[14][19]
Stated capacity goal1,000 POPS[5]"Hundred-thousand-petaflop" inference and "million-petaflop" training capacity[19]
Launches so far12 satellites (May 2025) and 2 satellites (July 2026)[2][20]Group 01, the same 12 satellites (May 2025), and 8 satellites of Group 02 (October 2026)[14][27]

Expanded article table

Launches

Date (Beijing time)RocketLaunch siteSatellitesNotes
2025-05-14, 12:12Long March 2DJiuquan Satellite Launch Center12 computing satellites, numbered 01 to 12 (Xingshidai-27 through Xingshidai-38, 星时代)First batch of the Three-Body constellation and Group 01 of Star-Compute[2][5][11]
2026-07-24, 07:33Lijian-1 (Kinetica-1) Y15Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone, Jiuquan2: the Jitianxing A-04 (吉天星A-04) computing satellite, also called Yunjian Muxi (云尖沐曦号), and the Xiguang-2 03 (西光贰号03星) remote sensing satellitePart of a five-satellite rideshare; reported as additions to the Three-Body constellation[20][21][26]
2026-10-14, 19:40Zhuque-2E Y4Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Test Zone8 ADA Space satellites (Xingshidai-39 and Xingshidai-44 through Xingshidai-50)Reported as Star-Compute Group 02; Cailian Press reported that they would network with the Group 01 satellites[27][28][29]

Expanded article table

The first 12 satellites each carry an onboard intelligent computing system and an inter-satellite communication system.[5] The batch also carried Earth-observation payloads and a cosmic X-ray polarization detector developed by Guangxi University and the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[4][6] Zhejiang Lab said the detector flies on satellites 01 and 02, which can make coordinated observations of gamma-ray bursts and other transient sources.[7] On July 25, 2025, a review panel at Zhejiang Lab found that the 12 satellites had completed development, launch and in-orbit platform testing in line with the contract's technical requirements.[11]

Yunjian Muxi, one of the two satellites launched in July 2026, was developed by Yunjian Information, the chip designer MetaX, Hangzhou City University, Xuntian Qianhe and other partners. It carries an "embodied intelligence" satellite model from Zhejiang Lab, meant to manage the satellite's health and to plan and execute tasks for one or several satellites; the launch was the model's first test in orbit.[20] Cailian Press reported that the satellite carries a computing payload based on MetaX GPU chips and will test the in-orbit reliability of a domestic Chinese GPU.[25] The second satellite, Xiguang-2 03, carries the FuXi and Dayu weather models developed by Fudan University and the Shanghai Academy of AI for Science, and the Puyun weather model from Hangzhou Mita Carbon Intelligence Technology.[20]

The October 2026 launch, on a LandSpace Zhuque-2E rocket, carried ten satellites: eight ADA Space computing satellites and two laser communication test satellites from Lanta Intelligence.[28] Reports on that launch from CGTN, Science and Technology Daily and Cailian Press described the eight satellites as the second batch of Star-Compute, and none of them called the satellites part of the Three-Body constellation. Cailian Press mentioned the Three-Body constellation only as a separate project, with its own target of 1,000 satellites and 1,000 POPS by 2032.[27][28][29]

Onboard computing and networking

Most of the published technical figures describe the first 12 satellites. They come from Zhejiang Lab, ADA Space and Chinese state media.

ItemReported value
Highest computing capacity of a single satellite744 TOPS (tera operations per second)[5]
Combined capacity of the first 12 satellites5 POPS[4][5]
Combined onboard storage30 TB[4][5]
Onboard AI model at launchA space-based model with 8 billion parameters[5]
Largest model the satellites can supportAbout 140 billion parameters, per on-site materials seen by Cailian Press at Zhejiang Lab[23]
Inter-satellite laser link speedUp to 100 Gbps[9][23]
Laser communication terminals on the first-launch satellites24 in total[13]
Planned capacity of the full constellation1,000 POPS[5]

Expanded article table

Xinhua gave 744 TOPS as the highest figure for any single satellite in the batch.[5] Yicai Global and Computerworld reported it as the capacity of each satellite.[8][9] China Daily described the batch's 5 POPS as "5 quadrillion floating-point operations per second," while Xinhua's Chinese report spoke only of operations and did not specify floating point.[5][22]

According to Science and Technology Daily, the onboard high-throughput router handles inter-satellite, satellite-to-ground and intra-satellite traffic at rates on the order of 100 gigabits per second.[7] Li Chao told China Daily that the satellites use both laser and microwave communication to exchange data.[22] Networking came in stages. By late December 2025, links between the ground and space and among three satellites were working, six-satellite networking was in progress, and the goal was to connect all 12.[13] In February 2026 the lab reported that six satellites had established links in orbit.[16] In August 2026, NASASpaceFlight reported ADA Space's statement that two of the 12 satellites kept a laser link running without a break for eight days while as much as 1,000 km apart in sun-synchronous orbit, and reported 99.99% uptime over that period.[26]

Models can be added or replaced after launch. Li Chao said a user's model or application can be checked on a ground digital twin system and then deployed or updated on any satellite in the constellation through a space-based distributed operating system.[16]

Models and applications

Date reportedModels deployed in orbitExamples given
December 20257Astronomy, meteorology and road detection models[13]
February 202610An 8-billion-parameter remote sensing model and an 8-billion-parameter astronomical time-domain model; 6 models or algorithms had been updated in orbit[16]
July 202620Includes the 8-billion-parameter remote sensing model[21][22]

Expanded article table

The project's stated reason for computing in orbit is the downlink bottleneck. Zhejiang Lab says fewer than one-tenth of useful satellite observations reach the ground under the usual model of sending raw data down for processing.[5][13] In April 2026, Li Chao put the share of data generated in space that is lost and never processed at up to 90 percent.[19] He also estimated that more than 3,000 remote sensing satellites could be in orbit by 2032, producing about 300 PB of data a day, and that processing that volume on the ground would take roughly 100,000 servers.[22] Processing in orbit is a form of edge computing,[9] in which users receive results, such as the location of a fire or the extent of a disaster area, instead of whole images.[23]

Reported demonstrations include:

  • Fire detection. Around midday on November 12, 2025, a surface anomaly detection model spotted a fire in northwest China during routine imaging, judged it to be probable straw burning, and marked the fire point and smoke area.[13]
  • Infrastructure census. In November 2025 the remote sensing model surveyed 189 square kilometers in northwest China and identified stadiums and bridges under heavy snow cover.[17]
  • Gamma-ray bursts. The astronomical time-domain model, running on the two satellites with X-ray polarization detectors, classifies gamma-ray bursts in orbit. Zhejiang Lab reports 99% event identification accuracy while cutting the amount of data sent down.[16]

Zhejiang Lab has named deep-space exploration, smart cities and natural resource surveys as application areas.[16] China Daily reported work on crop-yield monitoring and tracking of atmospheric pollution, and Li Chao has also mentioned short-term weather forecasting.[22] Cailian Press noted that some of the models shown at the lab were still in orbital testing or waiting for launch.[23]

ADA Space's Star-Compute program

ADA Space started the Star-Compute plan in November 2024.[14] A promotional article about partner Xingfan Technology published that month named ADA Space and Xingfan, together with Zhejiang Lab and other companies, as the plan's initiators, and described a plan for 3,000 space computing satellites between 2024 and 2032, plus 100 ground computing nodes.[30] At the May 2025 launch, the Star-Compute team gave the target as 2,800 satellites and said 54 universities, research institutes and companies had joined as founding partners.[6] ADA Space executive vice president Wang Yabo presented the plan at a conference in January 2026.[15] The company describes the network as 2,400 inference satellites and 400 training satellites in dawn-dusk, sun-synchronous and low-inclination orbits at 500 to 1,000 km, connected by laser links. The company's schedule is a network of about 1,000 satellites in commercial service by 2030, more than 95% of them for inference, and the complete network by 2035.[14][19] By October 2026 the company listed 108 partner organizations.[27]

ADA Space announced Group 02 at a conference in Tai'an on October 13, 2025, where it also showed a new computing satellite, Tianping-10 (天秤-10, L-10), that it said exceeds 10P of computing per satellite.[12] The company says that in November 2025 it uploaded Alibaba's Qwen3 large language model to the Group 01 satellites and ran inference tasks in orbit, with the full cycle of uploading a question, running the model in orbit and returning the answer taking under two minutes. ADA Space called this the first in-orbit deployment of a general-purpose large model; the South China Morning Post described Qwen3 as "one of the world's first" such models to operate in orbit.[14][15][19] In March 2026 the company launched an enterprise cloud service for space computing called Prometheus, and in April 2026 it reported using satellite computing, in work with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, to control a robot on the ground.[19]

The eight Group 02 satellites launched in October 2026 carry high-performance computing payloads, high-speed laser communication payloads for inter-satellite and satellite-to-ground links, and low-light cameras. They are meant to test a liquid-cooling loop at the 10-kilowatt scale, large deployable radiative cooling wings, a laser communication network and foundation model training in orbit.[27][28]

Plans and progress

Zhejiang Lab's targets for adding satellites have moved later. At the first launch in May 2025, the lab said it would deploy more than 50 computing satellites that year and about 100 by 2027.[4][7] In December 2025, Xinhua reported the 50-satellite target as a goal for 2026.[13] In July 2026, Xinhua reported that more than 10 computing satellites were operating and that two new satellites had just joined.[21] The lab's targets remain about 100 satellites by 2027 and about 1,000 by around 2032.[19][20][22] Wang Jian and Li Chao have said that at that size, a satellite would pass over any point on Earth roughly every three minutes.[20][22] Wang Jian has called 1,000 satellites "the smallest meaningful number," a scale that CGTN said would give enough computing capacity, better reliability through networking and timely service around the world.[24]

The Chinese state is also studying space computing. In April 2026, Xinhua reported that Yu Guobin, deputy director of the commercial space department at the China National Space Administration, had said China had begun a comprehensive feasibility study and pre-project assessment for a space-based intelligent computing constellation.[19]

Assessment

Nearly all of the technical claims about the constellation come from Zhejiang Lab, ADA Space and Chinese state or state-affiliated media. The reports cited here do not describe any independent measurement of the computing figures, model accuracy or laser link performance.

Cailian Press, a Shanghai financial news service, wrote in July 2026 that putting the technology into orbit is not the same as having a working business. It said the field was still at the stage of engineering verification and building demand. Open questions included whether recognition accuracy meets industry needs, whether service coverage is stable, whether customers will pay a premium for faster results, and how cross-border data, remote sensing applications and insurance decisions will meet regulatory requirements.[23] Yan Zhiyong, a researcher at China Telecom Cloud Technology, said in April 2026 that vacuum, wide temperature swings and intense radiation place severe demands on space computing hardware, including chip heat dissipation, and that servicing satellites after launch is prohibitively expensive or impossible.[19]

In March 2026, Gao Wen, a computer scientist at Peking University, argued that China should not follow SpaceX in launching AI data centers into orbit. He said electricity was not a major bottleneck for Chinese data centers and that China should focus on orbital computing systems that process data generated by satellites.[18] Commenting for Computerworld after the first launch, Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research, said the Three-Body system places inference and decision-making infrastructure "into orbits that may not fall cleanly under existing legal regimes."[9]

Comparable projects outside China include Starcloud, which launched a satellite carrying an NVIDIA H100 chip in November 2025, and Google's Project Suncatcher, which plans to put TPUs in orbit.[29] The article on space-based data centers compares these efforts.

References

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  2. ^1 ^2 ^3Xinhua, "China launches space computing satellite constellation," China Daily (Gansu), May 15, 2025. regional.chinadaily.com.cn/...c_1093014
  3. ^Xinhua, "China launches space computing satellite constellation" (page 2), China Daily (Gansu), May 15, 2025. regional.chinadaily.com.cn/...c_1093014_2
  4. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Xinhua, "China launches space computing satellite constellation" (page 3), China Daily (Gansu), May 15, 2025. regional.chinadaily.com.cn/...c_1093014_3
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  8. ^Dou Shicong, "China Launches Satellite Group to Boost Space Computing Power, Xinhua Reports," Yicai Global, May 14, 2025. www2.yicaiglobal.com/...ellites-with-ai-into-orbit
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  10. ^1 ^2Wency Chen, "Chinese scientist behind supercomputer in orbit urges collaborative use of AI in space," South China Morning Post, May 22, 2025. scmp.com/...orbit-urges-collaborative-use-ai-space
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  12. ^1 ^2 ^3"国星宇航'星算'计划02组星座发布，单星算力突破10P'天秤-10'卫星同步亮相" (ADA Space unveils Star-Compute Group 02 and the Tianping-10 satellite), IT Home via ifeng.com, October 14, 2025. tech.ifeng.com/...8nSBNnGj8iK
  13. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6Zhu Han, "推动AI在太空应用：探访'三体计算星座'指挥中心" (Visiting the Three-Body Computing Constellation command center), Xinhua, December 31, 2025. news.cn/...c
  14. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6"国星宇航披露'星算'计划进展：全球首次在轨部署通用大模型" (ADA Space discloses Star-Compute progress), IT Home, January 26, 2026. ithome.com/...576
  15. ^1 ^2Eunice Xu, "Alibaba's Qwen-3 becomes one of world's first AI models to operate in orbit," South China Morning Post, January 27, 2026. scmp.com/...es-worlds-first-ai-model-operate-orbit
  16. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5Zhu Han, "'三体计算星座'实现星间组网突破" (Three-Body Computing Constellation achieves inter-satellite networking breakthrough), Xinhua, February 13, 2026. news.cn/...c
  17. ^"China demonstrates AI computing power in outer space with satellite network breakthrough," CGTN, February 14, 2026. news.cgtn.com/...p
  18. ^Ling Xin, "China can't buy Elon Musk's theory on space-based AI centres: experts," South China Morning Post, March 9, 2026. scmp.com/...-theory-space-based-ai-centres-experts
  19. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7 ^8 ^9 ^10 ^11"From ground to orbit: China eyes computing in space," State Council Information Office of China, April 27, 2026. english.scio.gov.cn/...content_118464689
  20. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7 ^8"双星发射！三体计算星座加速组网 共商共建释放聚变效能" (Two satellites launched as the Three-Body Computing Constellation speeds up networking), Science and Technology Daily, July 24, 2026. stdaily.com/...content_552976
  21. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Xu Zhuoyu and Huang Xiao, "活力中国调研行丨探访之江实验室：科创活水充分涌动" (A visit to Zhejiang Lab), Xinhua, July 28, 2026. news.cn/...c
  22. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6 ^7 ^8Li Jiaying, "Space-AI computing solutions paving way for faster smart tech development," China Daily via ehangzhou.gov.cn, July 29, 2026. ehangzhou.gov.cn/...c_298438
  23. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6"算力的下一站，在太空：三体计算星座加速组网，离千星还有多远？" (Computing's next stop is space: how far is the Three-Body Computing Constellation from 1,000 satellites?), Cailian Press, July 30, 2026. cls.cn/...2441883
  24. ^1 ^2 ^3"Chinese scientist eyes AI-powered satellite constellation," CGTN, August 5, 2026. news.cgtn.com/...p
  25. ^"沐曦股份上市后首份半年报出炉：同比扭亏为盈 GPU产品出货量显著提升" (MetaX releases first half-year report since listing), Cailian Press, August 30, 2026. cls.cn/...2468913
  26. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4Martin Smith, "Amid failure, Wenchang celebrates milestone as China launches AI satellites and prepares for lunar south pole mission," NASASpaceFlight, August 12, 2026. nasaspaceflight.com/...china-roundup-20260813
  27. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4 ^5 ^6"国星宇航一箭八星发射任务取得圆满成功" (ADA Space's eight-satellite launch succeeds), Science and Technology Daily, October 14, 2026. stdaily.com/...content_596205
  28. ^1 ^2 ^3 ^4"China launches eight satellites for space-based computing," CGTN, October 14, 2026. news.cgtn.com/...p
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  30. ^1 ^2"星凡科技，推理算力产品领航者" (Xingfan Technology, a leader in inference computing products), PEdaily, November 28, 2024. news.pedaily.cn/...98216.shtml

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