{"id":15914,"date":"2015-11-22T19:59:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T11:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/china-launches-first-satellite-for-laos\/"},"modified":"2015-11-22T19:59:37","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T11:59:37","slug":"china-launches-first-satellite-for-laos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/china-launches-first-satellite-for-laos\/","title":{"rendered":"China launches first satellite for Laos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ymMZku4BBno?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Built and financed by China, a $258 million Laotian communications satellite project launched Friday aboard a Long March 3B rocket to better connect the mountainous Southeast Asia nation and surrounding regions.<\/p>\n<p>The LaoSat 1 spacecraft is the first satellite for Laos, an achievement Laotian state media hailed as a \u201clandmark\u201d for the country.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite lifted off at 1607 GMT (11:07 a.m. EST) from the Xichang launch center in southwestern China\u2019s Sichuan province, according to China\u2019s official Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n<p>Assisted by four strap-on liquid-fueled boosters, the Long March 3B rocket powered into space from Xichang, and deployed LaoSat 1 in a geostationary transfer orbit ranging between 190 kilometers (118 miles) and 41,787 kilometers (29,965 miles) in altitude, with an inclination of 18.4 degrees, according to U.S. military satellite tracking data.<\/p>\n<p>LaoSat 1\u2019s on-board propulsion system will boost the satellite into a circular geostationary orbit over the equator in the coming weeks, eventually guiding the spacecraft into a permanent operating position at 128.5 degrees east longitude.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite hosts 14 C-band and eight Ku-band transponders, and it has a design life of 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe LaoSat 1 will be very beneficial to our country because the majority of our country is mountainous,\u201d said Hiem Phommachanh, the minister of post and telecommunications in Laos, in a statement published by the state-owned Lao News Agency. \u201cOur satellite will be used for many purposes, including distance education and medicine, telecommunications and internet links, as well as facilitating anti disaster efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Two of the 22 transponders on LaoSat 1 will be used within Laos, the government said, and the rest of the payload will be leased to foreign customers.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite&nbsp;is owned by the LaoSat 1 Joint Venture Co., with joint ownership by the Laotian government and the&nbsp;China Asia-Pacific Mobile Telecommunications Satellite Co.<\/p>\n<p>The Lao News Agency reported the value of the LaoSat 1 project is $258 million, financed through a loan agreement with the Export-Import Bank of China.<\/p>\n<p>The satellite will be controlled from a facility in the Laotian capital of&nbsp;Vientiane staffed by Laotian and Chinese engineers, state media reported.<\/p>\n<p>LaoSat 1 was manufactured by the China Academy of Space Technology and is based on the builder\u2019s DFH-4S satellite platform, according to APT Satellite, a Hong Kong satellite operator hired as a consultant on the LaoSat 1 project. Other sources indicate the spacecraft is built on the DFH-3B satellite bus.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese President Xi Jinping called the LaoSat 1 project&nbsp;\u201ca significant manifestation of China-Laos comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership under new circumstances,\u201d according to Xinhua.<\/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>Built and financed by China, a $258 million Laotian communications satellite project launched Friday aboard a Long March 3B rocket to better connect the mountainous Southeast Asia nation and surrounding regions. The LaoSat 1 spacecraft is the first satellite for Laos, an achievement Laotian state media hailed as a \u201clandmark\u201d for the country. The satellite [&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":[135,3877,3878,205,1888,1611,1741],"class_list":["post-15914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-laos","tag-laosat-1","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-3b","tag-telecom","tag-xichang"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914"}],"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=15914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}