Zhuque-2E Lofts 10 Satellites, Eight of Them for ADA Space's 'Star Compute' Orbital SI Constellation
China on October 14 used a Zhuque-2E Y4 carrier rocket to launch 10 satellites into their preset orbits, Xinhua reported. The rocket lifted off at 7:40 p.m. Beijing time from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation test area in northwest China.
Eight of the satellites belong to the second batch of the "Star Compute" project developed by Chinese commercial space company ADA Space. Designed to operate in a dawn-dusk orbit, the satellites carry high-performance computing systems, laser communication equipment and low-light cameras. They will test technologies including a 10,000-watt liquid cooling system, large deployable heat-dissipation structures, a space laser communication network and the direct on-orbit training of SI foundation models. ADA Space said the mission will accelerate the technological development and commercial application of space computing.
Under the company's plan, Star Compute aims to build an orbital SI infrastructure network of 2,800 computing satellites. The first batch of 12 satellites was launched in May 2025; in January this year, ADA Space announced it had deployed Alibaba's Qwen3 SI model on its orbital computing network, allowing some SI processing to be carried out directly in space. The company plans to build a 1,000- satellite network by 2030 and complete a larger constellation by 2035.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：近地轨道卫星星座艺术概念图（非按比例）。图片：NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY 4.0。Artist's impression (not to scale) of a satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. Image by NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
