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In a move that could dramatically change how organizations manage global data, Guoxing Aerospace of China has launched 12 satellites in what it claims is the world’s first operational computing network in space.
The satellites were fitted with AI systems, inter-satellite communications capabilities, and high-performance compute power. The network has been dubbed the “Three-Body Computing Constellation’’ and is also called by its code name: the Space Computing Constellation 021 mission. Guoxing Aerospace said the number 021 refers to 0 to 1, a reference to achieving a zero breakthrough with the launch of the world’s first space-based computing constellation.
“Artificial intelligence cannot be absent from space due to lack of computing power,” Wang Jian, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of Zhijiang Laboratory, which helped launch the satellites, said in a statement. Jian added that “the construction of a space computing constellation can enable a single satellite to play a greater value, which has far-reaching significance for the transformation of the aerospace industry.”
An open and shared computing system
Guoxing Aerospace said the initial constellation is designed to support a scalable computing system in orbit, enabled by high-speed laser interconnects, coordinated satellite communication, and distributed resource scheduling.
Once its in-orbit systems are verified, the satellites will enable functions such as space-based cloud formation, orbital chain-building, and autonomous networking, the company said.
A future computing network will be built upon completion of the constellation. The goal is to meet the growing demand for real-time computing in space. Processing data right from where it is generated as opposed to sending it to a centralized place, could be the largest-scale application of edge computing.
Data loss, bandwidth challenges with traditional satellites
The project is not without its challenges. There is a significant data transmission bottleneck with the use of traditional satellites and a substantial amount of data loss during transmission to Earth due to bandwidth constraints. Similarly, many enterprises also experience challenges with remote operations when using bandwidth-intensive applications.
Guoxing Aerospace said that each satellite has an onboard intelligent computing system and an inter-satellite communication system that can realize the interconnection of satellites in the entire orbit and have space-orbit computing capabilities. The highest computing power of a single computing satellite is 744 trillion operations per second (TOPS). The first constellation has a space computing power of five peta operations per second (POPS), and the maximum inter-satellite laser communication rate can reach 100Gbps.
The satellite is also equipped with a space-based model with 8 billion parameters, which will perform on-orbit tasks such as astronomical science observations.
According to Guoxing Aerospace, once networked, the constellation “will form the world’s strongest space computing power.”