The Orbital Network of China Artificial Intelligence Superorders It begins to be a reality. The company Ada Space has launched the 12 first satellites of this constellation of spatial computing that will be formed by 2,800. Developed by the Chinese firm next to the laboratory Zhijiang and the Neijang high technology zoneeach of these satellites can process the data you collect on board, without depending on land stations, Thanks to an unprecedented computing capacity in space.
The launch took place on May 14, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centerin northwestern China, using a rocket Long March 2Dfrom which insulating tiles came off while ascending, according to Space News.
The 12 satellites are part of a major program, Star Computewhich projects to put into orbit what the company calls the ‘Three bodies computing constellation’which will be formed by the 2,800 satellites mentioned.
According to the company, It will be the first dedicated orbital computing constellation of the world And it is a change of satellites focused solely on the communication and collection of data to which they also serve as processing centers and AI platforms.
Each of the launched satellites incorporates An AI model with eight billion parameters and is able to perform 744 tops (Tera operations per second, by English), according to Ada Space in a statement. By comparison with consumer computers, a PC with NPU – proceeds dedicated to AI – requires 40 tops to execute local AI models and obtain Microsoft Copilot + PC certification. That is, each satellite has a computational power in AI Between 18 and 19 times more.
Satellites communicate with each other through Lasers at speeds up to 100 Gbps and share a total storage of 30 terabytes. In addition, the 12 satellites launched last week carry scientific instrumentsamong them an X -ray polarization detector to observe short cosmic phenomena such as gamma ray bursts. They also have the capacity to generate very precise three -dimensional digital representations of the physical world, useful for applications in response to emergencies, video games and tourism.
According to South China Morning Post, the advantages of having a super -tider in space go beyond reducing communication time. The medium indicates that traditional satellite transmissions are slow and That ‘less than 10 %’ of the data collected by the satellites reach the Earth, due to bandwidth limitations and availability of land stations.
Therefore, to reduce bottlenecks for data from space and other capacities could have significant economic, scientific and military consequences and align with China’s plans to be A world leader in artificial intelligence for the year 2030.
Jonathan McDowellspace historian and astronomer of the Harvard Universityhe affirmed to the environment that ‘orbital data centers can use solar energy and dissipate heat in space, which reduces both energy needs and carbon footprint‘.
While the United States and Europe have tried peripheral computing – proceeds data near the place where they are generated – in space, China seems to be the first power that displays a constellation of the specially designed at scale. According to SCMPboth US and Europe could undertake similar projects in the future.