{"id":10945,"date":"2021-09-27T23:59:16","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/chinese-smallsat-launcher-delivers-remote-sensing-payload-to-space\/"},"modified":"2021-09-27T23:59:16","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:59:16","slug":"chinese-smallsat-launcher-delivers-remote-sensing-payload-to-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/chinese-smallsat-launcher-delivers-remote-sensing-payload-to-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese smallsat launcher delivers remote sensing payload to space"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_53513\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-53513\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-53513\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/kz1a_jilin02d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"690\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/kz1a_jilin02d.jpg 690w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/kz1a_jilin02d-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/kz1a_jilin02d-678x452.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 690px) 100vw, 690px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-53513\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Kuaizhou 1A rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan launch base Monday. Credit: CASIC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A Chinese solid-fueled rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan launch base Monday and successfully deployed a small commercially-focused Earth-imaging satellite into polar orbit.<\/p>\n<p>The Kuaizhou 1A rocket, launching for the first time since a failure last September, took off from a remote launch pad at the Jiuquan space center at 2:19 a.m. EDT (0619 GMT; 2:19 p.m. Beijing time) Monday, Chinese officials said.<\/p>\n<p>Powered by three solid-fueled stages, with a liquid-fueled orbit injection engine, the Kuaizhou 1A rocket arced toward the south from Jiuquan, a spaceport in the Gobi Desert of northwestern China.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese officials declared the launch a success, and U.S. military tracking data confirmed the mission placed its payload in an orbit approximately 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, with an inclination of 97.5 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n<p>The Kuaizhou 1A rocket is operated by Expace, a subsidiary of the government-owned&nbsp;China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., or CASIC. Expace developed the Kuaizhou rocket family \u2014 based on Chinese military missile technology \u2014 to pursue a growing commercial space market in China.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite on-board the rocket was Jilin 1 Gaofen 02D, a new member of a commercially-focused fleet of remote sensing satellites owned by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co. Ltd. Thirty&nbsp;Jilin 1-series&nbsp;spacecraft have successfully launched since 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The Jilin 1 Gaofen 02D satellite is believed to be capable of collecting imagery with a resolution of better than 2.5 feet (76 centimeters), supporting applications in natural resource and environmental monitoring.<\/p>\n<p>The Kuaizhou 1A rocket is capable&nbsp;of injecting 660 pounds (300 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit, according to Expace.&nbsp;Kuaizhou means \u201cspeedy vessel\u201d in Chinese, a name indicative of its purpose as a satellite launcher that can be readied for liftoff in a short time period.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement after Monday\u2019s launch, CASIC said a factory in Wuhan, China, now has a capacity to produce up to 20 Kuaizhou rockets per year.<\/p>\n<p>The launch Monday marked the 11th flight of a Kuaizhou 1A rocket since its debut in 2017. It was the 36th orbital launch attempt by a Chinese rocket this year, and the 34th successful one.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Kuaizhou 1A rocket blasts off from the Jiuquan launch base Monday. Credit: CASIC A Chinese solid-fueled rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan launch base Monday and successfully deployed a small commercially-focused Earth-imaging satellite into polar orbit. The Kuaizhou 1A rocket, launching for the first time since a failure last September, took off from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10945"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}