{"id":11602,"date":"2021-06-21T17:33:08","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T09:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/chinese-military-payloads-deployed-on-long-march-2c-rocket-launch\/"},"modified":"2021-06-21T17:33:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T09:33:08","slug":"chinese-military-payloads-deployed-on-long-march-2c-rocket-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/chinese-military-payloads-deployed-on-long-march-2c-rocket-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese military payloads deployed on Long March 2C rocket launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_52379\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-52379\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-52379\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/lm2c_Yaogan30.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"690\" height=\"460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/lm2c_Yaogan30.jpg 690w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/lm2c_Yaogan30-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/lm2c_Yaogan30-678x452.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 690px) 100vw, 690px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-52379\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Long March 2C rocket lifts off from the Xinhua launch base June 18. Credit: CASC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>China launched three more Yaogan 30 military reconnaissance satellites June 18 aboard a Long March 2C rocket.<\/p>\n<p>The launch of another triplet of Yaogan 30 satellites makes 27 similar spacecraft deployed on a series of Long March 2C rocket launches since 2017.<\/p>\n<p>The latest trio of Yaogan 30 satellites took off at 2:30 a.m. EDT (0630 GMT) June 18 from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China.<\/p>\n<p>The Long March 2C launcher, with a height of roughly 140 feet (43 meters), climbed away from a launch complex nestled in green hills at Xichang with about 660,000 pounds of thrust.<\/p>\n<p>The two-stage rocket delivered the three Yaogan 30 satellites, along with a civilian data relay craft, into an on-target orbit, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC, the lead government-owned contractor for China\u2019s space program.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. military tracking data indicated the satellites launched into an orbit about 370 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth, at an inclination of 35 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n<p>CASC confirmed the launch carried the ninth triplet of Yaogan 30 satellites, which the group said will be \u201cmainly used for electromagnetic environment detection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese government uses the Yaogan name for the country\u2019s military satellites, and the Yaogan 30 family is believed to be designed for a signals intelligence mission.<\/p>\n<p>Some analysts suggested the Yaogan 30 family of satellites could be testing new electronic eavesdropping equipment, or helping the Chinese military track U.S. and other foreign naval deployments.&nbsp;But details about the spacecraft and their missions have not been disclosed by the Chinese government.<\/p>\n<p>The other satellite launched Thursday was Tianqi 14, a small commercial data relay satellite for the Beijing-based company&nbsp;Guodian Gaoke.<\/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 Long March 2C rocket lifts off from the Xinhua launch base June 18. Credit: CASC China launched three more Yaogan 30 military reconnaissance satellites June 18 aboard a Long March 2C rocket. The launch of another triplet of Yaogan 30 satellites makes 27 similar spacecraft deployed on a series of Long March 2C rocket [&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-11602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11602"}],"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=11602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}