{"id":16240,"date":"2015-06-28T01:26:25","date_gmt":"2015-06-27T17:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/china-sends-up-remote-sensing-satellite\/"},"modified":"2015-06-28T01:26:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T17:26:25","slug":"china-sends-up-remote-sensing-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/china-sends-up-remote-sensing-satellite\/","title":{"rendered":"China sends up remote sensing satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_7160\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7160\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7160 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gaofen8_launch.png\" alt=\"gaofen8_launch\" width=\"620\" height=\"449\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gaofen8_launch.png 620w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/gaofen8_launch-300x217.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7160\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gaofen 8 satellite lifted off at 0622 GMT (2:22 a.m. EDT; 2:22 p.m. Beijing time) Friday. Credit: Xinhua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>China launched a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite Friday on top of a Long March 4B rocket, according to state media reports.<\/p>\n<p>The Gaofen 8 satellite lifted off at 0622 GMT (2:22 a.m. EDT) from the Taiyuan space center in northern China\u2019s Shanxi province. A 15-story Long March 4B rocket boosted the spacecraft into a near-circular orbit with an average altitude of around 473 kilometers, or 294 miles, according to U.S. military tracking data.<\/p>\n<p>The orbit is inclined 97.3 degrees to the equator, and is similar to the orbit of China\u2019s Yaogan 14 military spy satellite.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s launch occurred at 2:22 p.m. Beijing time.<\/p>\n<p>Chinese officials said the Gaofen 8 satellite is part of a civilian program, joining the Gaofen 1 and Gaofen 2 Earth observation satellites launched from the Taiyuan space center in 2013 and 2014.<\/p>\n<p>China\u2019s state-run Xinhua news agency reported imagery from Gaofen 8 will aid in general land surveys, land ownership evaluations, urban planning, road network planning, crop yield measurements, and responding to natural disasters.<\/p>\n<p>The launch of Gaofen 8 was not officially announced in advance. Notices to pilots released Thursday outlining drop zones for the Long March rocket\u2019s stages gave the first warning of an impending space launch.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s launch marked China\u2019s second space launch of the year, and the 30th mission worldwide to successfully reach Earth orbit in 2015.<\/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>The Gaofen 8 satellite lifted off at 0622 GMT (2:22 a.m. EDT; 2:22 p.m. Beijing time) Friday. Credit: Xinhua China launched a high-resolution optical Earth observation satellite Friday on top of a Long March 4B rocket, according to state media reports. The Gaofen 8 satellite lifted off at 0622 GMT (2:22 a.m. EDT) from 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":[135,1793,4015,205,1780,1783],"class_list":["post-16240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-gaofen","tag-gaofen-8","tag-long-march","tag-long-march-4b","tag-taiyuan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240"}],"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=16240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}