B5.1 Satellite-Ground Collaboration and Intelligent Integration: Leading the New Paradigm of Commercial Satellite Applications with Integrated Communication, Navigation and Remote Sensing

The global space industry is at a historic inflection point. On the one hand, space infrastructure is expanding rapidly in scale and improving markedly in integrated service capability. Over the past five years, the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites worldwide has increased by nearly an order of magnitude. Driven by LEO constellation deployment and direct-to-device technologies, satellite communications are accelerating toward a globally connected network featuring space-ground integration, ubiquitous coverage, high throughput, and low latency. Satellite navigation is advancing toward multi-system compatibility and the widespread provision of high-precision services, with steady improvements in positioning, timing, and resilience against interference. At the same time, remote sensing satellites, enabled by constellation-based architectures and multimodal payloads, are providing all-weather, high-temporal-resolution, and high-spatial-resolution Earth observation capabilities on a global scale.

On the other hand, increasingly complex application scenarios in ecological and environmental protection, disaster management, agriculture, transportation, and other sectors are placing higher demands on space infrastructure. These demands extend beyond more accurate sensing, more efficient transmission, and more reliable positioning. They also require intelligent interpretation, decision support, and collaborative service capabilities tailored to specific operational contexts.

Against this backdrop, commercial space is no longer merely a complement to traditional government-led space systems. It is rapidly becoming a major engine for technological innovation, application expansion, and the development of new productive forces. Correspondingly, commercial satellite applications are evolving from separate communications, navigation, and remote sensing services into integrated space-information solutions for industry-specific applications. The convergence of communications, navigation, and remote sensing, together with the intelligent evolution of space-ground collaboration, is emerging as a new paradigm for commercial satellite applications. In recent years, China has carried out integrated communications-navigation-remote-sensing practices in areas such as Three-River-Source National Park—widely known as “China’s Water Tower”—and China’s Digital Twin Water Conservancy Projects. These practices have improved ecological protection across the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau and strengthened national capabilities for flood and drought prevention and response, demonstrating the practical value and feasibility of this development path.

Meanwhile, multiple countries have launched initiatives to build space artificial intelligence infrastructure, actively promoting the integration of AI with existing space technologies and gradually forming integrated service platforms that combine sensing, communications, computing, and applications. This trend is expected to drive space infrastructure beyond information acquisition and transmission toward intelligent perception, intelligent cognition, and intelligent services, while also creating broader opportunities for commercial satellite applications. For example, Chinese institutions have proposed intelligent remote sensing satellite system programs that place data, computing resources, and models on orbit, enabling new paradigms such as ground-based training with on-orbit inference and on-orbit data processing with on-orbit computing. These approaches can significantly enhance the real-time processing, multimodal fusion, intelligent analysis, and value extraction of massive remote sensing data, thereby shifting remote sensing services from image delivery to answer delivery. When integrated with communications satellites, space AI infrastructure can support broadband–narrowband collaboration, on-demand resource scheduling, and adaptive networking. When integrated with navigation satellites, it can strengthen autonomous orbit determination and timing, signal monitoring, and anti-jamming performance, thereby improving positioning accuracy, continuity, and service assurance in complex environments. As on-orbit processing capabilities continue to advance, integrated communications-navigation-remote-sensing applications will deepen further, and satellites will evolve from data acquisition platforms and relay nodes into end-to-end intelligent service nodes capable of delivering high-value information directly to users.

Looking ahead, space AI infrastructure, together with the new capability architecture formed through its deep integration with communications, navigation, and remote sensing systems, has the potential to become an important public asset for all humanity. It may provide more inclusive, accessible, and high-value space-information services for users worldwide. Through international platforms such as the International Astronautical Federation, the global community should encourage joint construction, sharing, and utilization of resources; strengthen academic exchange and collaborative innovation; and advance joint research on key technologies and governance issues, including space traffic management, computing-network integration, the fusion of space-based and non-space-based data, and information security. Such efforts will help support the achievement of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and contribute more broadly to global population well-being and economic development.