China launched a Long March 4B rocket on Saturday with a high-resolution mapping satellite for the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources and two smaller spacecraft designed for astronomical observations and data transmission services.
The three-stage rocket took off from the Taiyuan Space Center, located in northern China’s Shanxi province, at 0313 GMT on Saturday (11:13 pm EDT on Friday), according to the state news agency Xinhua.
The takeoff occurred at 11:13 am Beijing time, and the 15-story rocket flew south on a runway to place its cargoes into orbit. Chinese officials stated that the launch was a success. Tracking data from the US military indicated that the objects associated with the launch were injected into a polar orbit about 310 miles (500 km) above Earth, tilting 97.5 degrees toward the equator.
The third spacecraft in China’s Ziyuan 3 mapping satellite series was the main load on the Long March 4B rocket.
The Ziyuan 3-03 spacecraft, which weighs more than two and a half tons, joins two other Ziyuan 3 satellites launched in 2012 and 2016 to provide images and land survey data to the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources. Civilian-operated satellites “provide data for the investigation of the country’s land resources, natural disaster prevention, agricultural development, water resource management, environmental survey and urban planning,” Xinhua said.
The addition of a third Ziyuan 3 satellite will shorten the time that the Ziyuan 3 constellation can take pictures of the same location on Earth from once every three days to once a day, according to Xinhua.
China started launching Ziyuan satellites in 1999, and some spacecraft in the Ziyuan program have been developed in association with Brazil.
The two secondary payloads in Saturday’s launch were developed by Shanghai ASES Spaceflight Technology Co. Ltd., Xinhua said.
One of the satellites, called Tianqi 10, was launched for the Beijing-based Guodian Gaoke company for a data transmission and communication mission. The other small secondary charge, called the Lobster Eye 1, carries a wide-field X-ray astronomy instrument.
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