The idea is not illogical. Instead of laying thousands of kilometers of cable, on the surface and underwater, instead of using satellites owned by companies and governments, China proposes that the entire planet collaborate in a mega satellite constellation shared to provide real-time services to everyone on Earth, while avoiding dangerous space congestion.
The plan provides a common infrastructure network of some 48,000 multifunctional satellites driven by AIcoordinated throughands of a shared orbital cloud system.
According to the team at China’s National University of Defense Technology, this would be enough to provide internet, communications, navigation and other personalized services to the world’s eight billion peoplewith a fraction of the number of satellites currently proposed. The study has been published in National Science Review.
According to Yang Jun, professor of space instrumentation, specializing in satellite navigation systems, “the proposed sustainable, open and shared megaconstellation (OSSMC) could kill two birds with one stone.”
It would not only alleviate the sustainability challenge of congested low-Earth orbits, but also promote equitable access to space resources, he said. “It provides a valuable solution to build a community of shared future for humanity in space systems – adds Jun in a statement -. More than one million satellites have been ordered for launch worldwideled by projects such as SpaceX’s Starlink, which aspires to reach 42,000.” An obvious solution for space debris and the loss or duplication of resources.
OSSMC’s approach is based on two innovations: a hardware revolution and a services revolution. While traditional satellites are like islands, each built for a single purpose, such as communications, navigation or imaging, the team suggests breaking them down into modular components: sartificial intelligence (AI) sensors, networks and processors. These could be combined and reconfigured, “as if it were a computer,” the study states.
This makes satellites multifunctional and interconnected, significantly reducing costs and increasing coverage. The tests carried out by the authors indicate that said design could multiply coverage more than 10 times compared to conventional satellites.
The “global network” model of the Internet, the authors proposed an orbital cloud that pools satellite resources and allocates them intelligently. Instead of waiting for a signal, satellites could proactively respond to user requests.
“A user on land could connect with your phone and access satellite services on demand, just like requesting a ride through Uber – says Jun -. Simulations showed that the model could increase the success rate of random tasks to 97%, which would greatly improve the user experience.”
If realized, these changes could transform the way space is used, with satellites functioning as universal computers and space services provided such as the cloud, which would represent a fundamental break with the current model of a satellite, a function.