With the increasing use of multimedia in communications, the content security of remote-sensing images attracts much attention in both the academia and industry. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a famous symmetric cryptosystem. A symmetric remote-sensing image encryption algorithm using AES is presented. Firstly, to reduce the encryption times, the sender groups 16 pixel values together, and converts them into big integers; secondly, the sender encrypts big integers with AES and the chaotic system; finally, the encrypted image is obtained from encrypted big integers. Simulation data show that our algorithm exhibits both the high security and efficiency.