Satellite module layout is an important part of satellite system design, which deals with the optimal placement of payloads (equipments and instruments) in the module. From the perspective of space, a design scheme of the satellite module layout is that different payloads occupying different spaces in the container. When the spaces occupied by payloads change, a new design scheme will be formed. Therefore, the satellite module layout can be viewed as reasonably allocating the module space to payloads and optimally achieving some goals. On the basis of using the task allocation in ant colony labor division to achieve the space allocation in satellite module layout, an ant colony labor division optimization algorithm is proposed by incorporating the optimization features in satellite module layout. During the implementation process, heuristic position-occupying actions, adaptive environment stimulus and personalized response thresholds are designed based on the basic ant colony labor division algorithm. Meanwhile, some optimization techniques (such as tabu search, off-trap strategy and acceptance criteria) are introduced. Experiments are performed on 16 representative instances, and computational results show the high effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.