Layout design of a satellite module directly concerns its structure, performance, service life, and cost of assembly andmaintenance. It is an important andNP-complete problem. Themain difficulties consist of combinatorial optimizationsinmathematics and system complexity in engineering practice, and relevant researches are far from enough. This paperproposes a basic solution strategy for the optimal layout design of a satellite module, which consists of two stages,global (or loose) layout design and detailed layout design. Corresponding algorithms are then developed while takingthe layout design of an international commercial communication satellite as an example. They are the centripetalbalancing method for global layout design and a quasi Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) model-based Ant ColonyOptimization (ACO) algorithm for layout optimization. The proposed method demonstrates its feasibility and validityon an application instance. Existing problems and further research directions are finally discussed.