Abstract:The self-organizing network has the capability of actively adapting to the change of space environment. Therefore, it has a wide application prospect in space communication. This study analyzes the especial space resource for space self-organizing network, and according to the distance among space objects, the density and application scenarios space self-organizing networks are classified into four types including spatial-terrestrial self-organizing network, intra-satellite self-organizing network, inter-satellite self-organizing network, and interplanetary self-organizing network, whose networks performance are compared and analyzed. Finally, the directions of research in space self-organizing networks are introduced including network structure, network protocol, security management, and router protocol. A space network structure is suggested for local automatic and whole collaboration based on the mechanism "preparation-storage-forward- handle".