{"id":14070,"date":"2018-01-16T01:19:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T17:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/sharp-eyed-surveillance-satellite-launched-by-china\/"},"modified":"2018-01-16T01:19:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T17:19:06","slug":"sharp-eyed-surveillance-satellite-launched-by-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/sharp-eyed-surveillance-satellite-launched-by-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharp-eyed surveillance satellite launched by China"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_29720\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29720\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29720\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/136893168_15158361026071n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"675\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/136893168_15158361026071n.jpg 900w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/136893168_15158361026071n-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/136893168_15158361026071n-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/136893168_15158361026071n-678x452.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29720\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Long March 2D rocket lifted off Saturday from the Jiuquan space center in northwest China. Credit: Xinhua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The third in a new series of Chinese high-resolution mapping satellites lifted off Saturday aboard a Long March 2D rocket, joining two other craft launched into similar orbits in December.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese officials have released no details about the mysterious missions, which each launched on a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China\u2019s Inner Mongolia region.<\/p>\n<p>The third member of the series, dubbed LKW-3, lifted off at 0710 GMT (2:10 a.m. EST) Saturday from Jiuquan, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. A two-stage Long March 2D rocket placed the spacecraft into an orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) in altitude, inclined 97.3 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n<p>The orbital data was published in the U.S. military\u2019s catalog of human-made objects in space.<\/p>\n<p>Xinhua described the payload as a \u201cland resources exploration satellite,\u201d and offered no additional explanation of its mission.<\/p>\n<p>China launched two earlier land resource imaging satellites Dec. 3 and Dec. 23 into orbits nearly identical to the one achieved by the latest mission, LKW-3, on Saturday. The satellites are presumably part of a new Chinese military reconnaissance fleet, carrying high-resolution imaging instruments.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday\u2019s mission was the third Chinese space launch of the year, and the sixth worldwide.<\/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 2D rocket lifted off Saturday from the Jiuquan space center in northwest China. Credit: Xinhua The third in a new series of Chinese high-resolution mapping satellites lifted off Saturday aboard a Long March 2D rocket, joining two other craft launched into similar orbits in December. Chinese officials have released no details about [&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":[135,1578,25,3012,3070,205,2184],"class_list":["post-14070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-jiuquan","tag-launch","tag-lkw","tag-lkw-3","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-2d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070"}],"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=14070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}