SICHUAN – China successfully launched three new remote sensing satellites into orbit on Thursday using a Long March-2D rocket vehicle.
The rocket was launched at 10:22 a.m. Beijing Time from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.
The satellites then entered the predetermined orbit, marking the complete success of the mission.
The satellites, the second batch of the Yaogan-35 family, are primarily used for scientific experiments, land resource surveying, agricultural production estimation, and disaster prevention and mitigation.
Long March-2D, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), has a launch weight of 300 tons and can carry multiple satellites to different orbits.
It has a carrying capacity of 1.2 tons in a typical sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers, a space often occupied by weather or remote sensing satellites. Currently, the launcher has successfully completed 60 launch missions.
This mission is the 424th flight in the Long March launcher series.
China launched the first batch of three Yaogan-35 satellites on November 6 last year.
- Editor/ additional report by CGTN
