Building Dreams in the Heavens, Flourishing and Prosperous: A Review of the Achievements in the Development of my country's Commercial Remote Sensing Satellites

With policy support, a continuous stream of positive news has emerged. 

Policies and regulations for commercial remote sensing satellites

Remote sensing satellites play a very beneficial role in the country's socio-economic development. my country supports the development of the commercial remote sensing satellite industry and has introduced a series of policies and plans to support its development. For example, the "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly proposes to build a globally covered and efficient communication, navigation, and remote sensing space infrastructure system and to build commercial space launch sites, which has effectively promoted the development of commercial remote sensing satellites.

▲Relevant policies and plans for my country's commercial remote sensing satellite industry

The development of commercial remote sensing satellites is booming. 

It has become the commercial satellite with the largest number of units developed in my country.

In 2015, the "Jilin-1" optical remote sensing satellite, developed by Changguang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., was launched into space. This satellite was my country's first independently developed commercial remote sensing satellite. Since 2015, my country's commercial remote sensing satellite development has flourished, becoming the field with the largest number of commercial satellites developed and the most active in my country. In 2021, my country developed and successfully launched more than 87 commercial remote sensing satellites and their experimental satellites, the vast majority of which were optical remote sensing satellites, mainly including the Jilin, Gaojing, Beijing, Zhuhai, Aerospace Hongtu, Maritime Silk Road, Star Era, Tianyan, Qiancheng, Foshan, Qilu, Xiaoxiang, and Lingque series satellites.

As of June 2022, my country had over 120 commercial remote sensing satellites in orbit, of which more than 90% were optical satellites, covering panchromatic, multispectral, and hyperspectral payload types. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites are showing strong development momentum, covering C-band, X-band, and Ku-band frequencies. Cameras possess a wide variety of imaging modes, including conventional pushbroom, large-angle side-swing, staring video, agile imaging, stereo imaging, night vision, inertial space imaging, and multi-target imaging capabilities.

▲Table of commercial remote sensing satellites launched in my country in 2021

Meanwhile, commercial remote sensing satellite constellations are emerging continuously, and data services are becoming increasingly diversified, extending from querying and ordering, and programmed image capture to intelligent processing, data mining and analysis, and shared applications across the entire value chain. They are playing a vital role in natural resource management, disaster prevention and mitigation, food security, sustainable urban development, and public health monitoring. By the end of 2021, various entities in my country, including commercial aerospace companies, universities, industrial application research institutions, and local governments, had planned 27 commercial remote sensing satellite constellation projects, with a total of over 1801 satellites.

▲Table showing the construction status of major commercial remote sensing satellite constellations in my country (as of the end of 2021)

 Data application services are becoming more flexible, precise, and diversified. 

Meet the diverse needs of various users

The main outputs of commercial satellite remote sensing applications are satellite remote sensing images and image analysis services based on these images. Specific business segments include: data reception services, remote sensing data value-added services, information product services, and big data product services.

Today, accelerating digital development and building a digital China is the overall strategy for national informatization development in the new era. Commercial remote sensing satellite companies, through business models such as independently developing and launching remote sensing satellites, deeply processing remote sensing application products, and building integrated space-air-ground service platforms, flexibly meet the differentiated and diversified needs of various users, including governments, enterprises, and universities, at different stages.

Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics CAS Aerospace Science and Technology Group Co.,LTD：Commercial space company that independently develops hyperspectral remote sensing constellation

Based on the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics' (XIOM) top-tier domestic satellite payload technology, CAS XIOM has maximized the integration of advantages in the aerospace field since its establishment, continuously optimizing onboard payload configuration and key technical indicators, enhancing platform capabilities, improving the system's spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and observation methods, and creating commercial aerospace remote sensing satellite products with advanced domestic indicators.

Leveraging the all-weather, all-time, and fully intelligent monitoring capabilities of its satellites, and the effective remote sensing information monitoring characteristics of its hyperspectral payloads, CAS Xiguang focuses on integrating satellite applications with innovative applications. It has comprehensively deployed a constellation in the fields of high-resolution optical remote sensing and hyperspectral imaging. Starting from practical satellite applications, CAS Xiguang has independently designed, developed, and operates a commercial integrated remote sensing microsatellite constellation system—the CAS Xiguang Remote Sensing Constellation. The constellation encompasses hyperspectral satellites, high-resolution optical satellites, infrared satellites, video satellites, and radar satellites. Through integrated satellite platform and payload design, streamlined satellite batch development, and multi-satellite batch launch and deployment, it rapidly achieves on-orbit application capabilities. Equipped with various integrated payload configurations, it enables multi-purpose application development, comprehensively targeting fields such as natural resource monitoring, reconnaissance and mapping, national defense and security, environmental monitoring, marine monitoring, agriculture and forestry, emergency management, smart city planning, meteorology and hydrology, disaster reduction and relief, major engineering monitoring, culture and arts, finance and insurance, and internet value-added services. It provides high-frequency revisit monitoring of any target area and, based on the company's independently developed cloud service system, creates a satellite remote sensing big data sharing platform to provide commercial remote sensing data services to global users.

 Diversified application prospects and large-scale industrial clusters 

Provide more social value and jointly boost the national economy

Commercial remote sensing satellites are an important component of my country's Earth observation system. Since 2015, my country's commercial aerospace industry has experienced seven years of accelerated development. my country's satellite observation system has been continuously improved, data acquisition capabilities have been greatly enhanced, and application service levels have been significantly strengthened. Remote sensing technology has been widely applied in agriculture, land, forestry, water conservancy, meteorology, oceanography, environment, disaster reduction, statistics, transportation, education and other industries, providing basic support and information security for economic and social development.

At the same time, my country's commercial aerospace industry has formed industrial clusters in many provinces in just a few years, giving rise to a number of new commercial aerospace companies with strong competitiveness. More and more commercial remote sensing satellite companies are participating in satellite construction, services and industrial development, and actively exploring a sustainable data ecosystem. It is believed that with the gradual opening up of national industrial policies, the upstream, midstream and downstream of satellite remote sensing and space information services will usher in rapid growth in the next few years. Remote sensing data and its applications will penetrate into more fields and industries, and will have a profound impact on my country's aerospace industry ecosystem and development pattern.

As a member of the national commercial aerospace industry, CAS Xiguang will continue to exert its efforts in satellite research and development, data application and technological innovation, promote the transformation of high-tech achievements, and contribute to the development of the national economy and my country's commercial aerospace industry.

(Some data in this article comes from Satellite Application and Intelligent Research Consulting. If there is any infringement, please contact us to delete it.)