China Assembles Orbital Datacenter Pieces: In-Orbit AI and 100Gbps Laser Links

China is building the components of a spaceborne datacenter: on-orbit compute, cloud-style software updates and high-rate laser links. Zhijiang Lab's Three-Body Computing Constellation put 12 satellites in orbit with 744 TOPS peak per satellite and about 5 POPS aggregate, while AIRSAT-02 reached 120 Gbps via in-orbit software reconfiguration.

• Three-Body constellation: 12 satellites, 744 TOPS each, about 5 POPS total
• By February 2026 six satellites linked under a spaceborne distributed OS
• AIRSAT-02 raised laser link from 60 to 120 Gbps without hardware swap
• Pengcheng Nanke-1 (~150 kg) carries 5G NTN and 100 Gbps laser comms