About Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAMCAS) is a Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) satellite research and development institute in Shanghai. Its official introduction describes it as one of the major microsatellite innovation research institutes of China, working on micro-to-pico-scale satellite development and related technological innovation, and as a strong driving force in Chinese scientific satellite development and a leader in the application and commercial satellite industry. In the academy's own count on that page, IAMCAS had launched 168 satellites into space. It is distinct from the China Academy of Space Technology, the large state spacecraft builder profiled separately, and from CAS's National Space Science Center, which plans space science missions rather than building this institute's satellite platforms.

Origins in the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites

IAMCAS was built on the basis of the Shanghai Engineering Center for Microsatellites (SECM). A Shanghai Pudong government account of the academy's inauguration explains that the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites, inaugurated in Zhangjiang in September 2017, was built on the basis of SECM, a non-profit organisation established by CAS and the Shanghai Municipal Government, and that it was dedicated to being an innovative engine for satellite technology, an aerospace technology transfer and industrialisation base, and an open platform for international exchanges and cooperation. The same account, published in October 2018, credited the young academy with successfully launching 38 satellites in recent years, including the new generation of BeiDou navigation satellites, the Dark Matter Particle Explorer and the companion satellite of the Tiangong-2 space lab, and with long-term partnerships with top research institutes such as the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology and the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics. The candidate record for this profile likewise places its formal base in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, from September 2017.

One institute, two locations: Zhangjiang and Lingang

IAMCAS operates, in its official phrase, on a "one institute, two locations" mode: the Lingang headquarters and the Zhangjiang campus. Its sites cover a total area of more than 125,000 square metres. There are seven assembly, integration and test (AIT) halls with the capability to perform mechanical, thermal and noise tests as well as microwave chamber experiments. The academy states that it is capable of holding 30 to 50 satellites of the 1,000-kilogram scale, or more than 100 micro- and nano-scale satellites, at the same time. The Zhangjiang campus alone covers a 27,000-square-metre area devoted to quality control tests, mechanical control analysis, space environment study and satellite assembly. That physical capacity — parallel AIT lines rather than a single clean room — is what allows the institute to work simultaneously on navigation, science, remote sensing and constellation spacecraft, and it underpins the shift described below from one-off experimental microsatellites to batch and constellation production.

People and organisation

The official introduction gives a staff of more than 1,000 people in scientific research and administration, 89 percent of whom are postgraduates and doctors, with an average age of 34; half of the staff, it adds, have been actively involved in the development process of particular satellite missions. The organisation is structured around its work rather than around academic departments. Alongside the five mission divisions described in the next section, IAMCAS has a New Technology Center aimed at the most cutting-edge research in the satellite domain, a Technology Development Center in charge of the verification of key technologies in satellite engineering and product development, and a Multi-Media Satellite Department responsible for the development of low-orbit internet satellites for worldwide commercial use. Zhang Yonghe appears in the academy's reporting both as a vice-president of IAMCAS and as chief designer in its Innovation X programme and director of its Microsat Technology Advanced Research Center, illustrating how senior engineers carry named programme responsibilities alongside administrative roles.

Five branches: communications, remote sensing, navigation, micro/nano and science

The major academic fields of IAMCAS cover satellite systems and engineering in both theory and technology, organised into five key branches: telecommunication, remote sensing, navigation, micro/nano satellites and scientific satellites. The telecommunication division targets the development of telecommunication satellites with a focus on electronics and spacecraft design, aiming at improvement of complicated satellite system design. The navigation division is responsible for navigation satellites, its major task being to develop high-reliability, long-lifespan, autonomously controlled satellites to enhance the capability of space infrastructure. The remote sensing division aims at remote Earth observation and probing, with the purpose of building a network of remote sensing constellations and lowering cost to better serve the demands of the military as well as marine studies. The scientific satellites division focuses on space research, its key technologies including the "hyper stable and hyper accurate" platform and the integrated design of payloads and platforms. The micro/nano satellite division focuses on making micro/nano satellites spectrumised — built to standardised product spectra — intelligent, and mass-produced, with the goal of achieving maximum function at minimum cost in satellite design.

Science missions: DAMPE, QUESS and Taiji-1

The missions IAMCAS names first in its own introduction are scientific. They include the Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE), China's first space-based scientific satellite for the search for dark matter, also known as "Wukong" or "Monkey King", launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on 17 December 2015 as the first of the series of space science missions of CAS's Strategic Priority Program on Space Science; DAMPE is a 1.7-tonne science satellite whose payload of four sub-detectors was led by the Purple Mountain Observatory, while the satellite itself was developed by IAMCAS — the academy's exhibition material describes it straightforwardly as the world's first dark matter satellite "Wukong", developed by Microsat. The introduction also names the Quantum Experiments at Space Scale satellite (QUESS), the world's first quantum science satellite in the first phase of the CAS space science programme, and the Taiji-1 satellite, the technology pathfinder associated with space-based gravitational-wave detection work. A further example of the science line is the microgravity technology experiment satellite launched on 31 August 2019 by a Kuaizhou-1A rocket from Jiuquan, developed by IAMCAS for on-orbit experiments on ultra-high-precision control and measurement under microgravity, laying foundations for space-based gravitational-wave detection and ultra-high-precision inertial navigation; it belonged to the second phase of the CAS space science programme.

Navigation, companions and sustainable development

Beyond one-off science spacecraft, IAMCAS is credited with the new-generation BeiDou navigation satellites — the satellites of China's BeiDou system that has achieved global network coverage, as its exhibition hall presents them — and with companion microsatellites flown alongside crewed and laboratory spacecraft: the companion microsatellite for the Shenzhou spacecraft and, as the Pudong account specifies, the companion satellite of the Tiangong-2 space lab. Its remote sensing and applications line is illustrated by the Sustainable Development Goals Satellite 1 (SDGSAT-1), launched by a Long March 6 from Taiyuan on 5 November 2021, for which IAMCAS was responsible for the overall research and development, with the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, the Aerospace Information Research Institute and the National Space Science Center as main participating units. Part of the Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project of CAS, SDGSAT-1 carries thermal infrared, glimmer and multispectral imagers to observe environmental changes linked to coastal ecosystems and human activities such as urbanisation, habitation and energy consumption. That mission was IAMCAS's 39th satellite launch, bringing its total at that point to 75 satellites successfully launched — a count that has since more than doubled in the academy's own current figure of 168.

Innovation X and opening the platform to other scientists

In July 2022 IAMCAS and CAS Space, the CAS-affiliated launch company, launched the "Innovation X Scientific Flight" programme, a low-cost space science and new-technology experiment initiative with a worldwide open call for science payloads and products needing in-orbit verification. As announced, the programme planned each year to launch four scientific nanosatellites of about 50 kilograms, two microsatellites of about 100 kilograms and one scientific experimental satellite of about 600 kilograms, each equipped with science payloads, flying on CAS Space's Lijian-1 (Kinetica-1) solid rocket, which had made its successful test flight that month. IAMCAS provides the Innovation X satellite platform, which can host a variety of payloads; chief designer Zhang Yonghe said the programme was meant to "provide comprehensive and integrated launch services for global scientists, research institutions, universities, and space companies". The programme marks a change of role: an institute that built satellites for national missions offering standardised platform capacity to outside experimenters.

Constellation factories: Genesat and the G60 / Qianfan satellites

The academy's industrialisation mission is clearest in Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, known as Genesat. SpaceNews reported that Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST) and IAMCAS established Genesat in 2022 to set up satellite manufacturing facilities for the G60 low Earth orbit communications megaconstellation — the constellation later widely known as Qianfan, or Thousand Sails. The first flat-panel satellite for G60 rolled off the assembly line at the G60 digital satellite production factory in Shanghai's Songjiang District in December 2023, at facilities managed by Genesat and reported to be capable of producing 300 satellites per year; the constellation itself was planned at around 12,000 satellites, with an initial 108 to be launched across 2024. Genesat went on to raise more than 1 billion yuan in a Series A+ round announced on 30 December 2024, and by then 56 Qianfan satellites were in orbit after three batches of 18 launched on Long March 6A rockets in 2024, the second batch having been developed by Genesat. The candidate record for this profile also credits IAMCAS with groups of China's state internet-constellation satellites, consistent with this move from institute-built prototypes to factory production.

International cooperation: STARLab and joint missions

IAMCAS presents itself as an open platform for international exchange, and its documented collaborations match that claim. The China-Portugal STARLab, a joint laboratory for space and maritime technology established under the Belt and Road Initiative and led by IAMCAS with a Portuguese foundation partner, was inaugurated in December 2021 in Shanghai to develop technology for ocean monitoring. The academy's news pages also carry its work on the Sino-French SVOM gamma-ray burst satellite and, most recently in its listing, the China-Europe SMILE mission — the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency and CAS launched on a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana. In October 2018 the academy and Zhangjiang jointly announced the Zhongke Innovation Space, an aerospace incubator intended to use CAS's technological advantages in space science to promote innovation and application in the aerospace sector, with SECM deputy director Liang Xuwen saying it would be developed into an aerospace science and technology incubation platform with global influence.

Outreach and place in China's satellite industry

The academy also runs public-facing work in Lingang, where its Space Satellite Popularization Base was established on 30 July as one of the first industrial tourism ventures in the Lingang New Area. Through graphic exhibition, physical model display, planetary exploration demonstration, VR immersive experience and aerospace cultural and creative activities, visitors are introduced to the development of Chinese satellites and to Microsat results — the "Wukong" dark matter satellite, the globally networked BeiDou satellites, remote sensing and communication satellites and nanosatellites among them. Taken together, the record shows an institute that began as a Shanghai engineering centre for small satellites, was inaugurated as a CAS innovation academy in Zhangjiang in September 2017, and now spans the full range from pico-scale experimental platforms and flagship science missions such as DAMPE and QUESS, through BeiDou navigation spacecraft, to digital-factory constellation production through Genesat — with, by its own current count, 168 satellites launched.