Uzbekistan's first domestically developed remote sensing satellite has transmitted its first image taken from orbit, capturing Athens and achieving onboard AI processing.

Uzbekistan's satellite, jointly launched with China, has transmitted its first orbital image!

The image captures Athens, the capital of Greece, and was sent back just a few hours after the satellite’s launch. Figure 1

Reuters report dated July 8.

The Uzbekistan Samarkand-2028 satellite, jointly launched on August 5 with a Chinese company, has successfully transmitted its first surface image from orbit. This was announced by the news office of Uzbekistan's space agency, "Uzbekkosmos."

According to the agency, the image shows Athens, the capital of Greece, with data returned by the satellite just a few hours after launch.

The satellite was launched on August 5 aboard the Jielong-3 rocket from a maritime launch platform in the Yellow Sea near Shandong Province, China, placing it into a sun-synchronous orbit along with Indonesia’s Lampung-1 satellite.

Equipped with a hyperspectral Earth observation system, the satellite can collect data across more than 20 spectral bands—going beyond conventional photography by enabling identification of vegetation, soil, and water body compositions on the ground. Figure 2

The onboard AI processing module was developed by an Uzbek team, allowing partial data analysis directly on the satellite. This eliminates the need to transmit all raw images back to Earth, significantly reducing data turnaround time.

The project is named “Samarkand-2028,” commemorating Uzbekistan’s Samarkand hosting the 2028 International Astronautical Congress.

Although the first image was taken over Europe’s Athens, the satellite’s primary mission targets Uzbekistan: monitoring crop growth (such as cotton and wheat), water resources, ecological conditions, and land use changes to support agricultural production and national land management.

This marks Uzbekistan’s first remote sensing satellite developed in collaboration with another country, representing a significant step forward in Central Asia’s space capabilities and serving as a landmark achievement in China-Uzbekistan space technology cooperation.

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1872902088436803/

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