On Tuesday, the Zhuque-3 reusable carrier rocket successfully delivered the "Honghu-03" satellite into its designated orbit from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation and Test Zone, achieving the nation's first land recovery of a launch vehicle's first stage. Meanwhile, over 1,000 kilometers away at Beijing's Yizhuang area, the country's first open commercial space TT&C shared platform, the Beijing Rocket Street Commercial Space Intelligent TT&C Center, was officially inaugurated on the same day. It conducted comprehensive tracking, telemetry, and command for both the rocket and satellite throughout this historic mission, realizing the full-circle achievement of "Yizhuang rocket, Yizhuang satellite, Yizhuang TT&C," marking a milestone for the commercial space industry.
The Beijing Rocket Street Commercial Space Intelligent TT&C Center was constructed by Yizhuang-based enterprise Aerospace Long March Launch Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd., serving as one of six common service platforms under the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area's key Beijing Rocket Street project. The center comprises three primary systems: a command and control hall, a data center server room, and intelligent software for central operations. Its capabilities span ten core business functions, including mission planning, ground station network resource scheduling, orbit determination, telemetry and remote control, multi-satellite scheduling and resource management, data processing and analysis, intelligent fault diagnosis and emergency response, long-term operations and support, comprehensive situational monitoring, and digital mission simulation.
Functioning as an intelligent spacecraft operations command hub, the center leverages a mature and universal architecture foundation within the aerospace sector, deeply integrating digital intelligence technologies such as AI large models, cloud computing, and big data. It has established a leading domestic technical service system that integrates "rocket, satellite, ground station, usage, and management" into a unified framework, consolidating core capabilities for launch area TT&C, flight path TT&C, recovery zone TT&C, and long-term on-orbit satellite management. The center's aerospace TT&C technical capabilities are exceptionally robust. Offering global commercial space TT&C services, it covers low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, and cislunar space, with the capacity to support no fewer than 200 commercial rocket launch/recovery TT&C operations and manage TT&C services for at least 5,000 commercial satellites annually.
"To put it vividly, the TT&C center acts as the 'neural hub' for space launch missions. During the rocket launch phase, the center receives data relayed from various ground stations, completes rocket flight trajectory calculations and telemetry data analysis, monitors the rocket's flight status, and assists in situational assessment for the launch mission. Once the satellite enters orbit, it can monitor and analyze the satellite's on-orbit status in real time, receive and process data transmitted by the satellite to support scientific exploration, communications, navigation, and other aerospace applications, and manage the satellite's in-orbit operations," explained Ma Zhao, Deputy Director of the Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Industry Bureau and Director of the Commercial Space Industry Special Class at the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. "Going forward, companies at Beijing Rocket Street can conduct data interpretation for rocket launch missions, mission-level command coordination, and TT&C command, data reception, and processing for satellite in-orbit operations without dispersing their TT&C capabilities across different locations. Our commercial space enterprises now have their own 'shared command post.'"
During the Zhuque-3 reusable carrier rocket launch mission, the center's functions were further validated. Through dedicated broadcast equipment connected to the launch site via a distributed seating system, the center simultaneously received downlinked rocket telemetry data, innovatively achieving a "dual-link fusion display" of video feeds and rocket status parameters. By receiving satellite TT&C data in real time, it presented a complete operational picture from satellite-rocket separation to satellite orbital insertion, flawlessly supporting the entire TT&C mission encompassing rocket launch, first-stage vertical landing recovery, and satellite orbital insertion.
With the center now operational, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area has filled a crucial gap in the commercial space TT&C segment, achieving a complete industrial loop from "satellite-rocket manufacturing, to launch services, to TT&C, and to data applications." This intelligent, round-the-clock informational hub, spanning from low Earth orbit to deep space, ensures that the flight path of "Yizhuang rockets" and "Yizhuang satellites" is more stable and reliable. "This is a vivid embodiment of the Beijing Rocket Street construction goal, providing aerospace enterprises with critical innovation support at key links and offering a powerful tool for coordinating high-quality development with high-level safety," Ma Zhao stated. As the nation's first commercial space common scientific research and production base, Beijing Rocket Street includes four functional units: an innovation R&D center, a high-end manufacturing center, a common testing center, and a display and operations control center. It systematically deploys six major platforms: the commercial space intelligent TT&C center, a commercial space common testing platform, a commercial space public service platform, a one-stop support platform for commercial space product reliability and applications, a spatiotemporal information data commercial service platform, and a space situational awareness industry service platform, all serving enterprise technological innovation and providing strong support for the healthy and rapid development of the commercial space industry.
Ma Zhao further noted that, anchored by Beijing Rocket Street, nine production capacity projects covering over 2,500 mu of the Aerospace Street area are currently under construction, which will accelerate the formation of full-industry-chain "thousand-satellite production and launch" capabilities. The Beijing Rocket Street Commercial Space Intelligent TT&C Center is precisely the intelligent lighthouse built for Yizhuang's "hundred rockets, thousand satellites" journey into the vast sea of stars. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area will accelerate the construction of a commercial space industry highland with global influence, supporting the development of large reusable rockets, new-generation internet satellites, industrial batch production, and flight-based launch services. It will also cultivate more new fields and directions, promote the deep integration of commercial space with artificial intelligence, and shape a new landscape for the space economy.
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