What Is Jilin-1? The 100-Satellite Constellation Explained
Jilin-1 is the biggest sub-metre imaging constellation flying: 100+ satellites launched since 2015. Who builds it, what it sees, and how to buy from it.
Summary
- Jilin-1 is a commercial Earth observation constellation built and operated by Chang Guang Satellite Technology (CGSTL), a company spun out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ optics institute in 2014 and named after Jilin province, where it’s headquartered.
- More than 100 Jilin-1 satellites have launched since October 2015, making it the largest sub-metre imaging fleet in orbit. CGSTL reported 117 satellites in orbit in early 2025; independent trackers count 63 active as of August 2026.
- Commercial buyers order Jilin-1 imagery at 0.5 m and 0.75 m resolution, in four spectral bands (red, green, blue, near-infrared), through licensed distributors outside China.
- The constellation’s size is the product: with tens of satellites imaging at once, archive coverage is dense and new tasking windows come around fast compared with single-satellite systems.
- Pricing sits well below legacy Western sub-metre archives, which is why Jilin-1 has quietly become the default choice for a lot of large-area monitoring work.
Ask two satellite trackers how many Jilin-1 satellites are flying right now and you’ll get two different answers. CGSTL, the company that builds them, reported 117 in orbit at the start of 2025, after putting up 31 in a single year. Independent tracking sites count 63 active today. Both numbers are defensible. A fleet that’s grown too fast to count is a strange thing to exist, and it barely gets talked about outside China.
That gap matters if you buy satellite imagery, because the Jilin-1 constellation has spent the last decade becoming the workhorse behind a lot of the sub-metre archive coverage on the market. If you’ve ordered high-resolution imagery through a multi-provider platform recently, there’s a reasonable chance some of it came off a Jilin-1 satellite.
What follows is the full picture: who builds it, how it got this big, what the satellites actually capture, and what it’s like to order from it in practice.
Who Builds Jilin-1: CGSTL
Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd, usually shortened to CGSTL, was founded in 2014 as a spin-out of the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The institute had been building optical instruments since 1958. CGSTL took that lens-making pedigree and pointed it at one product: small, cheap, mass-produced imaging satellites.
The name isn’t a code. Jilin is simply the province in northeast China where Changchun sits, the same way an Australian company might have called its constellation “Queensland-1”.
The first batch launched on 7 October 2015: one optical satellite, two video satellites, and a technology demonstrator. That mission is generally credited as China’s first self-developed commercial remote sensing system. Not a government programme with a commercial arm bolted on afterwards, but a company selling pixels from day one.
2015
first launch, four satellites
100+
satellites launched since
0.5 m
resolution sold commercially
300
CGSTL's stated fleet target
How the Constellation Grew
Most Western imaging programmes launch one large, exquisite satellite every few years. CGSTL went the other way: smaller satellites, launched in batches, iterated constantly. The generations that followed the 2015 originals got lighter and cheaper per unit while the optics held at sub-metre ground resolution.
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Oct 2015
First four satellites launch
China's first self-developed commercial remote sensing system reaches orbit.
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2022
Fleet target raised from 138 to 300
CGSTL expands its constellation goal as per-satellite build costs fall.
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2024
31 satellites launched in one year
CGSTL reports 117 Jilin-1 satellites in orbit by early 2025.
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Dec 2024
100 Gbps laser downlink demonstrated
A satellite-to-ground optical link test, aimed at getting the flood of imagery down faster.
The stated end goal is a 300-satellite fleet with revisit measured in minutes for any point on Earth. Treat that as a company target rather than a delivered spec. What’s already real, though, is dense daily coverage: with tens of imaging satellites working at once, the odds that one of them photographed your site this week are high.
What Jilin-1 Satellites Actually Capture
Jilin-1 isn’t one satellite design. It’s a family, and the family has three working branches:
High-resolution optical (the GaoFen series). These are the units behind the imagery most buyers order. Panchromatic and multispectral optics at sub-metre resolution, sold commercially at 0.5 m and 0.75 m ground sample distance in four bands: red, green, blue, and near-infrared. The near-infrared band is what lets you compute vegetation indices like NDVI rather than just look at pictures.
Wide-swath (the KuanFu series). Fewer satellites, much bigger footprint. The KuanFu-01 units image a swath on the order of 136 kilometres wide at 0.5 m panchromatic resolution, per eoPortal’s constellation record. One pass covers an area that would take a conventional high-resolution satellite many passes to build up.
Video satellites. A niche most buyers never touch, but a real one: staring video from orbit at around 1 m resolution, used for things like monitoring port activity or verifying that something moved.
For a working comparison against the data most people already use:
| Source | Resolution | Bands | Cost model | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jilin-1 (0.5 m tier) | 0.5 m | RGB + NIR | Paid, per km² of AOI | Site monitoring, asset mapping, change detection |
| Jilin-1 (0.75 m tier) | 0.75 m | RGB + NIR | Paid, per km² of AOI | Large-area mapping where 0.5 m is overkill |
| Sentinel-2 | 10 m | 13 multispectral | Free (ESA) | Regional vegetation and water monitoring |
| Landsat 8/9 | 30 m | 11 multispectral | Free (USGS/NASA) | Long time series, broad land-cover change |
The free archives are not competitors to Jilin-1 so much as the layer underneath it. At 10 m, a Sentinel-2 pixel covers a suburban house and its yard. At 0.5 m, you can count the cars in the driveway. You use the free layer to decide where to look and the sub-metre layer to actually look. Our guide to choosing the best satellite imagery for a given application goes deeper on that decision.
Why Nobody Agrees on the Satellite Count
The honest answer to “how many Jilin-1 satellites are there?” is: it depends what you count, and when.
CGSTL’s own figure of 117 in orbit dates to early 2025 and counts everything launched and not deorbited. Independent trackers like satellitemap.space list 63 active as of August 2026, because they count satellites that are demonstrably still manoeuvring and transmitting. Early units from 2015 to 2018 have been retired or have decayed. Batches get renamed between announcement and launch. Some satellites carry sponsor names (there is genuinely one named after a video-streaming platform) and appear under two designations at once.
The reported numbers, plotted, explain the confusion better than any paragraph:
Reported Jilin-1 satellites in orbit, at launch milestones
Five years to reach 25. Then 83 more in less than three. A documentation culture built for the first curve doesn’t survive contact with the second, and that’s the honest reason the count is fuzzy.
None of this is unusual for a fleet this size. It’s what a constellation looks like when it’s being built faster than it’s being documented. For a buyer, the count itself doesn’t matter much. What matters is the effect: enough active sub-metre satellites that archive density and tasking opportunity beat any single-satellite system on the market.
Buying Jilin-1 Imagery Outside China
You don’t order from CGSTL directly. Like most operators, they sell internationally through licensed distributors, who handle tasking requests, archive search, licensing paperwork, and delivery. Geopera is one of them: we hold a direct distribution licence with CGSTL, alongside our other supplier agreements.
The practical experience of ordering is the same as for any other sensor in a multi-provider platform. You search the archive over your area of interest, or task a new capture if the archive doesn’t have what you need. Price is quoted per square kilometre of your AOI before you commit; the current rates for each resolution tier are on our pricing page.
Two things are worth knowing before you shortlist it.
The second thing is processing. Jilin-1 imagery, like all raw satellite imagery, arrives as sensor-geometry data that needs orthorectification, pansharpening, and colour correction before it drops cleanly into a GIS. Some platforms hand you the raw scene and wish you luck. Every Jilin-1 order through Geopera runs our full processing chain before delivery, at the published per-km² rate, so what lands in your inbox is analysis-ready. The 0.5 m and 0.75 m sensor pages carry the full specifications.
Where Jilin-1 Fits in a Buyer’s Toolkit
A decade in, the constellation has settled into a clear role. It’s the value option in sub-metre imaging: not the sharpest pixels money can buy (30 cm Western sensors still hold that line), but sharp enough for most monitoring, mapping, and change-detection work, at a price and coverage density that lets you image large areas or frequent revisits without the budget conversation getting awkward.
If your job is watching a mine site monthly, mapping a shire, or verifying ground conditions across a portfolio of assets, Jilin-1 at 0.5 m or 0.75 m is very often the rational default. When you need to read the licence plate rather than count the cars, you step up to a 30 cm sensor for that specific capture. A multi-provider account means that choice is per-order, not per-contract.
Search the Jilin-1 archive over your own area in Pera Portal, with the price visible before you order. If you’d rather talk through whether it fits your monitoring problem, get in touch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Jilin-1?
Jilin-1 is a commercial Earth observation satellite constellation built and operated by Chang Guang Satellite Technology (CGSTL) of Changchun, China. More than 100 satellites have launched since October 2015, capturing optical imagery sold commercially at 0.5 m and 0.75 m resolution.
How many Jilin-1 satellites are in orbit?
CGSTL reported 117 satellites in orbit in early 2025. Independent trackers counted 63 active satellites as of August 2026, excluding retired and decayed units. The company’s stated long-term target is a 300-satellite fleet.
What resolution is Jilin-1 imagery?
Commercially available Jilin-1 imagery comes in 0.5 m and 0.75 m resolution tiers, each with four spectral bands: red, green, blue, and near-infrared. The constellation also includes wide-swath satellites covering roughly 136 km per pass and video satellites at around 1 m resolution.
Who owns the Jilin-1 constellation?
Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd (CGSTL), a commercial company founded in 2014 as a spin-out of the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is named after Jilin province, its home region.
Can you buy Jilin-1 satellite imagery outside China?
Yes. CGSTL sells internationally through licensed distributors, including Geopera. Archive imagery and new tasking are ordered per square kilometre of your area of interest, with published pricing. Government buyers should check their own procurement rules, as some jurisdictions restrict Chinese-operated constellations.
