Aerospace Tianmu

Aerospace Tianmu (航天天目（重庆）卫星科技有限公司), formally Aerospace Tianmu (Chongqing) Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., is a commercial small-satellite operator based in the Xiyong Micro-Electronics Industrial Park of Western (Chongqing) Science City. The company is closely affiliated with China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) and was established to build and operate China's first commercially financed low-Earth-orbit meteorological satellite system.

The company designs, builds and operates the Tianmu-1 constellation, a sun-synchronous-orbit (~520 km) fleet of small satellites carrying GNSS radio-occultation (GNSS-RO) and GNSS-reflectometry (GNSS-R) payloads — including the company's own Tianmu GNSS Occultation Sounder (TGNOS-M) instrument. The satellites are compatible with all four global navigation constellations (BeiDou, GPS, Galileo, GLONASS) and collect atmospheric temperature, humidity and pressure profiles, sea-surface reflection data, and ionospheric occultation measurements. Aerospace Tianmu launched its first Tianmu-1 satellites in January 2023 and had put more than 20 satellites into orbit across multiple Kuaizhou-1A and Ceres-1 launches from Jiuquan by early 2024, completing the constellation's first operational phase.

On 30 December 2024, data from the 23-satellite Tianmu-1 constellation was formally integrated into the China Meteorological Administration's (CMA) operational observation system — the first time commercial small-satellite data has been authorized for use in China's national weather forecasting pipeline. The constellation now delivers roughly 30,000 atmospheric occultation profiles per day to CMA, improving the spatial and temporal resolution of atmospheric sounding alongside China's Fengyun meteorological satellites.

Beyond core weather-data supply, Aerospace Tianmu's stated applications include high-precision numerical weather prediction, typhoon monitoring and tracking, civil aviation and maritime meteorological support, rainfall/flood monitoring, and disaster early warning. The company has also indicated plans to scale in-house manufacturing of satellite subsystems such as onboard computers and propulsion units to support future constellation buildout.