GalaxySpace Completes China's First Commercial Whole-Satellite Delivery to Southeast Asia

Thailand is GalaxySpace's first overseas destination. Co-founder Liu Chang said the collaboration validated the company's full-chain overseas engineering capability. In 2024, GalaxySpace built a ground test station in Bangkok with Mahanakorn University of Technology, running vehicle-satellite and remote-medicine pilots — China's first overseas deployment of low-orbit broadband satellite internet. Two years later, the firm has moved from verification to commercial delivery.

The Lingzhi-09 CubeSat is designed to collect earth-observation data for Thai land, agriculture and ecology, and to support Thai universities in satellite design, tracking and remote-sensing education. The delivery, GalaxySpace said, amounts to an integrated “satellite plus ground system plus capability-building” package, with Thai technicians trained in China and teams to follow for on-site commissioning.

GISTDA's deputy executive director for space technology, Phee Choosri, welcomed it not just as technology transfer but as a vehicle for talent building and knowledge exchange. Southeast Asia's island-heavy geography makes ground networks expensive, giving satellite services clear advantages in remote, maritime and emergency communications. Scholars at the China University of Political Science and Law and Beihang University said the deal ran a complete route from compliance review to overseas delivery, offering a transferable model for other domestic commercial space firms eyeing exports.

Beijing's policy support — including 2026 measures to deepen satellite-export and data pilot zones and to optimize cross-border data-outflow assessment — is turning commercial space exports into a replicable path. With Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa holding real demand for remote sensing and satellite internet, the Belt and Road space-information corridor opens a broad runway for more Chinese companies — and for GalaxySpace to deepen participation in global space-economy cooperation.

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