Uzbekistan's Samarkand-2028 satellite lifted off Wednesday alongside Indonesia's Lampung-1 from a sea-based platform off the coast of China's Shandong province, in a launch that Uzbek officials scheduled for between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Tashkent time.
The Samarkand-2028 satellite belongs to the Chinese company STAR.VISION, with Uzbekistan contributing the name, helping develop the onboard AI module, and gaining rights to use the resulting data. STAR.VISION itself is a Chinese firm specializing in satellite design, intelligent satellite systems and AI-driven data analysis, and it built the spacecraft under a memorandum signed with Uzbekistan's national space agency, Uzbekcosmos, in November 2025.
The satellite's core capability is hyperspectral imaging — sensors that can detect features invisible to the human eye by capturing data across dozens of spectral bands rather than the handful used in ordinary imagery. First Deputy Digital Technologies Minister Oleg Pekos has described the practical value of this in blunt terms: rather than beaming raw imagery back to Earth for processing, the AI module lets the satellite analyze more than 22 spectral bands directly onboard, cutting the time needed to turn a raw scan into a usable crop-identification result. In effect, the selling point isn't the imagery itself — plenty of satellites take pictures — but the shortened pipeline from raw data to actionable output.
Uzbek engineers' actual contribution is narrower than "building a satellite": they developed the onboard AI system, described as the first time Uzbek specialists have participated in creating an AI module for a satellite. That's a genuine technical milestone for the country's nascent space sector, but it's a software contribution to someone else's hardware, not an independent launch capability.
Where the data will be used
- Agriculture: the flagship use case is real-time monitoring of agricultural crops, with Uzbekcosmos and STAR.VISION exploring maps of Uzbekistan's cotton and wheat fields based on satellite data. Pekos has said Uzbekistan's own crop-identification model will run directly on the satellite to distinguish cotton and grain vegetation.
- Environment: officials cite monitoring of air quality and forest dynamics and broader ecological tracking.
- Natural resources: the Digital Technologies Ministry says the data will also be used for natural resource monitoring and other fields, though specifics beyond agriculture and environment remain vague in official statements.
The name is chosen to mark Samarkand's hosting of the 2028 International Astronautical Congress, after the city was nominated over competing bids from Mumbai and Manama.
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