TAIYUAN, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- China sent a new group of satellites into space on Tuesday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in northern Shanxi Province.
Launched at 2:50 a.m. (Beijing Time) aboard a Long March-2D carrier rocket, the satellite group, the PIESAT-2 09-12 satellites, entered the preset orbits successfully.
The launch marks the 553rd flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.
The four Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, developed by private satellite maker GalaxySpace, feature superior capabilities, including all-day, all-weather, and high-resolution Earth observation.
According to Duan Xiao, chief designer of SAR satellite at GalaxySpace, multiple SAR satellites can improve revisit rates for various network applications, supporting high-resolution imaging, high-frequency observation, and regular global coverage.
This enables millimeter-level deformation measurements of targets like dams and bridges, serving applications such as land resources, earthquake monitoring, disaster prevention and mitigation, basic geographic information acquisition, and forestry, Duan said.
GalaxySpace has been continuously improving the overall development capabilities of SAR satellites, with eight batch-produced SAR satellites delivered so far, Duan added.
The Long March-2D carrier rocket was developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
This type of two-stage liquid launch vehicle is reliable, adaptable and cost effective. It can serve diversified launch modes for a single satellite or multiple satellites.
Its designed carrying capacity reaches 1.3 tonnes in a 700-km sun-synchronous orbit, according to the rocket developer.■