{"id":12311,"date":"2020-07-25T21:25:24","date_gmt":"2020-07-25T13:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/china-launches-high-resolution-mapping-satellite\/"},"modified":"2020-07-25T21:25:24","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T13:25:24","slug":"china-launches-high-resolution-mapping-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/china-launches-high-resolution-mapping-satellite\/","title":{"rendered":"China launches high-resolution mapping satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Long March 4B rocket lifts off Saturday with the Ziyuan 3-03 mapping satellite and two secondary payloads. Credit: Xinhua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

China launched a Long March 4B rocket Saturday with a high-resolution mapping satellite for the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources and two smaller spacecraft designed for astronomical observations and data relay services.<\/p>\n

The three-stage rocket took off from the Taiyuan space center, located in Shanxi province in northern China, at 0313 GMT Saturday (11:13 p.m. EDT Friday), according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n

Liftoff occurred at 11:13 a.m. Beijing time, and the 15-story rocket flew on a southerly track to place its payloads into orbit. Chinese officials declared the launch a success. U.S. military tracking data indicated objects associated with the launch were injected into a polar orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth, with an inclination of 97.5 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n

The third spacecraft in China\u2019s Ziyuan 3 series of mapping satellites was the primary payload on the Long March 4B rocket.<\/p>\n

The Ziyuan 3-03 spacecraft, weighing more than two-and-a-half tons, joins two other Ziyuan 3 satellites launched in 2012 and 2016 providing land survey imagery and data to the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources. The civilian-operated satellites \u201cprovide data for the country\u2019s land resources investigation, natural disaster prevention, agriculture development, water resource management, environmental survey and urban planning,\u201d Xinhua said.<\/p>\n

The addition of a third Ziyuan 3 satellite will shorten the time the Ziyuan 3 constellation can take images of the same location on Earth from once every three days to once per day, according to Xinhua.<\/p>\n

China began launching Ziyuan satellites in 1999, and some spacecraft in the Ziyuan program have been developed in partnership with Brazil.<\/p>\n

The two secondary payloads on Saturday\u2019s launch were developed by Shanghai ASES Spaceflight Technology Co. Ltd., Xinhua said.<\/p>\n

One of the satellites, named Tianqi 10, was launched for the Beijing-based company Guodian Gaoke for a communication and data relay mission. The other small secondary payload, named Lobster Eye 1, carries a wide-field X-ray astronomy instrument.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Long March 4B rocket lifts off Saturday with the Ziyuan 3-03 mapping satellite and two secondary payloads. Credit: Xinhua China launched a Long March 4B rocket Saturday with a high-resolution mapping satellite for the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources and two smaller spacecraft designed for astronomical observations and data relay services. The three-stage rocket […]<\/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":[1661,135,159,1752,25,2146,205,1780],"class_list":["post-12311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astronomy","tag-china","tag-earth-observation","tag-guodian-gaoke","tag-launch","tag-lobster-eye-1","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-4b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12311"}],"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=12311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}