{"id":12882,"date":"2019-10-18T22:13:51","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T14:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/china-launches-mysterious-geostationary-satellite\/"},"modified":"2019-10-18T22:13:51","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T14:13:51","slug":"china-launches-mysterious-geostationary-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/china-launches-mysterious-geostationary-satellite\/","title":{"rendered":"China launches mysterious geostationary satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_41307\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-41307\" style=\"width: 678px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-41307\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/lm3btjs4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/lm3btjs4.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/lm3btjs4-300x163.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-41307\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Long March 3B rocket lifted off from the Xichang space center at 1521 GMT (11:21 a.m. EDT) Thursday. Credit: CCTV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>China successfully launched a satellite toward geostationary orbit Thursday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, but the spacecraft\u2019s purpose remained a mystery.<\/p>\n<p>The TJS 4 satellite lifted off from the Xichang space center in southwestern China\u2019s Sichuan province at 1521 GMT (11:21 a.m. EDT; 11:21 p.m. Beijing time) Thursday. A Long March 3B rocket \u2014 China\u2019s workhorse launcher for geostationary satellites \u2014 carried the TJS 4 spacecraft into space after flying east from the hilly Xichang spaceport.<\/p>\n<p>The three-stage, 184-foot-tall (55-meter) Long March 3B rocket, boosted by four strap-on engines, released the TJS 4 satellite into an elliptical transfer orbit ranging in altitude between 124 miles (200 kilometers) and 22,255 miles (35,817 kilometers), according to U.S. military tracking data.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft was tracked in an orbit inclined 27 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n<p>The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, or CALT, announced the mission was successful.<\/p>\n<p>TJS 4 is likely heading for a position in geostationary orbit more than 22,000 miles (nearly 36,000 kilometers) over the equator. The satellite will use on-board propulsion to circularize its orbit in the coming weeks, and lower its orbital inclination over the equator.<\/p>\n<p>Statements released by CALT, a government-owned rocket manufacturer, and Chinese state media claimed the TJS 4 satellite will test communications technologies in space.<\/p>\n<p>China has launched three previous satellites in the TJS series in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The previously-launched satellites were also described by Chinese media as communications technology demonstration payloads, but independent analysts and satellite trackers believe they were likely built for military missions.<\/p>\n<p>The new TJS 4 spacecraft may have an intelligence-gathering mission collecting information from radio or electronic signals. Jonathan McDowell,&nbsp;an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks global space activity, tweeted that he supports such a theory.<\/p>\n<p>Some analysts believe the second TJS satellite may be an early warning station designed to detect missile launches.<\/p>\n<p>The TJS 3 satellite launched in December 2018 released a smaller spacecraft after reaching orbit, but China has not acknowledged it, and the satellite\u2019s purpose remains a mystery.<\/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 3B rocket lifted off from the Xichang space center at 1521 GMT (11:21 a.m. EDT) Thursday. Credit: CCTV China successfully launched a satellite toward geostationary orbit Thursday aboard a Long March 3B rocket, but the spacecraft\u2019s purpose remained a mystery. The TJS 4 satellite lifted off from the Xichang space center in [&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":[135,25,205,1888,2476,1741],"class_list":["post-12882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-launch","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-3b","tag-tjs-4","tag-xichang"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12882"}],"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=12882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}