{"id":14104,"date":"2017-12-24T01:57:58","date_gmt":"2017-12-23T17:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/land-imaging-craft-launched-for-chinese-military\/"},"modified":"2017-12-24T01:57:58","modified_gmt":"2017-12-23T17:57:58","slug":"land-imaging-craft-launched-for-chinese-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/land-imaging-craft-launched-for-chinese-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Land imaging craft launched for Chinese military"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_29331\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29331\" style=\"width: 675px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-29331\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/136847140_15140113794251n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"675\" height=\"451\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/136847140_15140113794251n.jpg 899w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/136847140_15140113794251n-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/136847140_15140113794251n-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/136847140_15140113794251n-678x453.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 675px) 100vw, 675px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-29331\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 0414 GMT Saturday (11:14 p.m. EST Friday) from the Jiuquan space base in northwestern China. Credit: Xinhua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A land imaging satellite soared to a 300-mile-high perch above Earth Saturday after lifting off on top of a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space base in the Gobi Desert, joining a similar military reconnaissance craft launched earlier this month in the same type of orbit.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft, dubbed LKW-2, will be \u201cmainly used for remote sensing exploration of land resources,\u201d China\u2019s state-run Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n<p>The Long March 2D booster lifted off at 0414 GMT Saturday (11:14 p.m. EST Friday) from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, and headed south to deploy its payload into a nearly-circular orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) in altitude. The orbit\u2019s inclination, or tilt to the equator, is 97.5 degrees, according to tracking data published by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n<p>The circumstances of Saturday\u2019s mission, which blasted off at 12:14 p.m. Beijing time, are nearly identical to a launch from Jiuquan on Dec. 3, when a Long March 2D rocket took off at almost the same time of day and placed a payload in the same type of orbit.<\/p>\n<p>In both cases, Chinese state media said the satellites would be used for land imaging, and the spacecraft are presumably part of a new Chinese imaging and reconnaissance network.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday\u2019s launch placed the LKW-2 satellite into an orbit positioned 180 degrees away from the location of the LKW-1 craft launched Dec. 3, allowing them to revisit and re-image the same place on Earth twice as often as possible with one satellite.<\/p>\n<p>Western analysts believe the satellites are likely high-resolution imaging platforms for the Chinese military.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday\u2019s launch marked the 17th Chinese space launch attempt of the year. Sixteen of the missions successfully reached orbit.<\/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 at 0414 GMT Saturday (11:14 p.m. EST Friday) from the Jiuquan space base in northwestern China. Credit: Xinhua A land imaging satellite soared to a 300-mile-high perch above Earth Saturday after lifting off on top of a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan space base in the [&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":[135,159,1578,25,3012,3088,205,2184],"class_list":["post-14104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-earth-observation","tag-jiuquan","tag-launch","tag-lkw","tag-lkw-2","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-2d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14104"}],"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=14104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}