Yesterday (19th), the Zhuque-3 reusable launch vehicle successfully delivered the "Honghu-03" satellite into its designated orbit from the Dongfeng Commercial Aerospace Innovation Experimental Zone, marking China's first land recovery of a rocket's first stage. Over a thousand kilometers away in Beijing's Yizhuang area, the country's first open commercial aerospace TT&C sharing platform—the Beijing Rocket Avenue Commercial Aerospace Intelligent TT&C Center—officially commenced operations on the same day. The center managed the full telemetry, tracking, and command process for the historic launch, achieving the milestone of "Yizhuang rocket, Yizhuang satellite, Yizhuang TT&C" and cementing a landmark achievement for the commercial space industry.
Developed by Yizhuang-based enterprise Aerospace Long March Launch Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd., the Beijing Rocket Avenue Commercial Aerospace Intelligent TT&C Center is one of six common service platforms under the Beijing Rocket Avenue project, a key initiative by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. The center comprises three major systems: a command and control hall, a data center computer room, and intelligent central software. It offers ten core operational capabilities, 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, situational comprehensive monitoring, and mission digital simulation.
As an intelligent spacecraft operations command hub, the center leverages a mature, general-purpose aerospace architecture. It deeply integrates advanced digital technologies such as AI large models, cloud computing, and big data to build a leading domestic technical service system that unifies "satellite, rocket, launch site, application, and management" elements. The center consolidates core capabilities including first-stage zone TT&C, flight path zone TT&C, recovery zone TT&C, and long-term on-orbit satellite management, significantly enhancing its aerospace TT&C capabilities. Serving the global commercial space TT&C market, the center covers low Earth orbit, geostationary orbit, and cislunar space, with the capacity to support no fewer than 200 commercial rocket launch or recovery TT&C missions and TT&C services for no fewer than 5,000 commercial satellites annually.
"Simply put, the TT&C center acts as the 'neural hub' of a space launch mission. During the rocket launch phase, the center receives data from various ground tracking stations, calculates the rocket's flight trajectory, parses telemetry data, monitors the rocket's flight status, and assists in mission situational assessment. After satellite insertion, it monitors and analyzes the satellite's on-orbit status in real-time, receives and processes downlinked satellite data, supports various space applications such as scientific exploration, communications, and navigation, and manages the satellite's on-orbit operations," explained Ma Zhao, Deputy Director of the Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Industry Bureau and Director of the Commercial Space Industry Office at the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area. "Going forward, enterprises at Beijing Rocket Avenue can conduct rocket launch mission data interpretation, mission-level command coordination, and satellite on-orbit operational TT&C command, data reception, and processing all in one place, eliminating the need to disperse TT&C capabilities across different locations. Our commercial space companies now have their own 'shared command post'."
The center's capabilities were further validated during the Zhuque-3 reusable launch vehicle mission. Using dedicated broadcast equipment connected to the launch site via a distributed seat system, the center synchronously received rocket downlink 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, the center presented the complete operational picture from satellite separation to orbital insertion, successfully supporting the full TT&C process for the rocket launch, first-stage vertical landing recovery, and satellite orbit insertion.
With the center now operational, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area has filled a crucial gap in the commercial space TT&C segment, completing the industry loop from "satellite and rocket manufacturing, launch services, TT&C, to data applications." This intelligent information hub, enabling round-the-clock monitoring and control from low Earth orbit to deep space, makes the journey of "Yizhuang rockets" and "Yizhuang satellites" safer and more reliable. "This vividly embodies the construction goals of Beijing Rocket Avenue, providing aerospace enterprises with critical innovation support and offering a strong foundation for coordinating high-quality development with high-level security," Ma Zhao stated. As the nation's first commercial aerospace common scientific research and production base, Beijing Rocket Avenue includes four functional units: an innovation and R&D center, a high-end manufacturing center, a common testing center, and an exhibition and operations control center. It systematically deploys six major platforms: the commercial aerospace intelligent TT&C center, a commercial aerospace common testing platform, a commercial aerospace public service platform, a one-stop service platform for commercial aerospace product reliability and application support, a spatiotemporal information data commercial service platform, and a space situational awareness industry service platform. These platforms support enterprise technological innovation and provide strong backing for the healthy and rapid development of the commercial space industry.
Ma Zhao further noted that, supported by Beijing Rocket Avenue, nine production capacity projects within the 2,500-mu Aerospace Street are under construction, accelerating the formation of a full-industry-chain capability for "thousands of satellites." The Beijing Rocket Avenue Commercial Aerospace Intelligent TT&C Center serves as the intelligent lighthouse guiding Yizhuang's "hundreds of rockets and thousands of satellites" toward the sea of stars. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area will accelerate its efforts to build a globally influential commercial aerospace industry hub, supporting the development of large reusable rockets, next-generation internet satellites, industrial-scale batch production, and flight-based launch services. It will also cultivate new fields and directions, advance the deep integration of commercial aerospace with artificial intelligence, and shape a new landscape for the space economy.
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