Established in 1994, the Payload Operation Center(formerly known as Payload Application Center) is the unique ground operation and management center for space science and utilization of China Manned Space Program. It also plays an important role in flight control of the program.

Since established,the Payload Operation Center has successfully carried out payload in-orbit operation management of Shenzhou I to Shenzhou VI, Shenzhou VII (including companion star), the rendezvous and docking of Tiangong-1 with Shenzhou VIII, IX and X, and the flight control over moonlets. It has successfully supported space science and utilization in space life scientific experiments, space material scientific experiments, microgravity fluid scientific experiments, basic physics scientific experiments, earth environment monitoring, space environment monitoring and physics detection.

At present, the Payload Operation Center is equipped with  advanced X/S band multi-data stream based high-speed data receiving system, high performance computing system, storage system with high reliability, unified communications network, visual command system, etc. Additionally, it can support hundreds of science professionals to carry out their work at the same time, with  a ground data receiving station of 18 acres, several computation equipment rooms of 460㎡, a monitoring hall of 330㎡, a payload studio of 128 ㎡ and a long-term operation room with 128㎡, as well as other supporting facilities.

Currently, the Payload Operation Center is responsible for the payload operation in Tiangong-1 target spacecraft which has provided trouble-free service for over twenty-five thousands hours. It will also complete the development and construction of the ground support system to support the missions of space science and application in Tiangong-2 space laboratory and Tianzhou-1 cargo ship. Many new features will be incorporated into the system, such as high-speed multi-stream data receiving, multi-task collaborative planning, massive data processing, quick view of high-speed data, accurate calculation and prediction of satellite orbit. Besides, new attempts are explored in some fields, e.g., virtual reality and high availability human-computer interaction, scientific data visualization, prognostics and health monitoring, etc.

In the future, based on the principle of improving business level, actively expanding, developing subjects, and racing to the top, the Payload Operation Center will make comprehensive deployment for the overall design of flight control, ground system development, load operation management, general technical support, mission window, science popularization education, etc. to target the missions in manned space laboratory and space station. It will set up a complete technique system and standard system for operational control. In addition, the Payload Operation Center will solve critical problems in long operation and management, complex task, high-performance control and operation collaboration, and realize normative and professional operation and management of large scale space utilization tasks. Moreover, It will utilize techniques in communication, computer graphics, information processing, orbital dynamics, software development and hardware integration to achieve breakthroughs in intelligent mission planning and evaluation, massive dataset mining and visualization, multi-loads fault diagnosis and health management, telescience experiment (or virtual experiment) support, cooperative control of complex systems, advanced channel coding and decoding, etc.

During the last twenty years, the Payload Operation Center has obtained 4 national invention patents and over 50 software copyrights. Moreover, hundreds of papers have been produced.

A number of awards and reputation are also attained, such as, National Prize of Scientific and Technological Progress (First Prize: 1), provincial and ministerial-level as well as Military Prize of Scientific and Technological Progress (Second Prize: 5, Third Prize: 2), Outstanding Contributions to the Manned Spaceflight Program (1) and the Laurels Team Achievement Award (1). Besides, many staffs are awarded National May 4th Youth Medal and National May 1 Labor Medal, or honored as an outstanding contributor to the Manned Spaceflight Program.