{"id":16823,"date":"2014-11-18T22:52:09","date_gmt":"2014-11-18T14:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/chinese-military-satellite-launched-by-long-march-rocket\/"},"modified":"2014-11-18T22:52:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T14:52:09","slug":"chinese-military-satellite-launched-by-long-march-rocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/chinese-military-satellite-launched-by-long-march-rocket\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese military satellite launched by Long March rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1260\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1260\" style=\"width: 621px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1260\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/longmarch2c.png\" alt=\"The Long March 2C rocket lifts off at 2:53 a.m. Beijing time Saturday (1853 GMT Friday) from the Taiyuan launch center. Credit: Xinhua\" width=\"621\" height=\"459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/longmarch2c.png 896w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/longmarch2c-300x222.png 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/longmarch2c-768x567.png 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/longmarch2c-80x60.png 80w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 621px) 100vw, 621px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1260\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Long March 2C rocket lifts off at 2:53 a.m. Beijing time Saturday (1853 GMT Friday) from the Taiyuan launch center. Credit: Xinhua<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>China launched a Long March rocket last week with a satellite Western analysts believe will conduct all-weather global radar surveillance for the Chinese military.<\/p>\n<p>The Long March 2C rocket lifted off at 1853 GMT (1:53 p.m. EST) Friday from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China\u2019s Shanxi province. Launch occurred at 2:53 a.m. Beijing time Saturday, according to the official Xinhua news agency.<\/p>\n<p>The Yaogan 23 spacecraft carried on top of the two-stage Long March 2C booster is flying more than 300 miles above Earth in an orbit over the poles tilted 97.3 degrees to the equator, according to tracking data acquired by the U.S. Air Force\u2019s Space Surveillance Network.<\/p>\n<p>China did not announce the launch in advance, keeping with the country\u2019s usual policy of not disclosing the launch schedule for military satellites.<\/p>\n<p>The state-run Xinhua news agency reported the Yaogan 23 satellite \u201cwill mainly be used for scientific experiments, natural resource surveys, crop yield estimates and disaster relief.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The circumstances of the launch of Yaogan 23 \u2014 including the launcher, launch site and orbit \u2014 match satellites put into space in April 2009, November 2011 and October 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Independent observers of the Chinese space program believe Yaogan 23 is the newest member in a series of satellites supplying the Chinese military with reconnaissance imagery. The satellite may carry a synthetic aperture radar instrument that can see objects on the ground through cloud cover and in darkness.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s launch marked the 71st space mission to reach Earth orbit in 2014 and the 10th Chinese space launch of the year.<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Long March 2C rocket lifts off at 2:53 a.m. Beijing time Saturday (1853 GMT Friday) from the Taiyuan launch center. Credit: Xinhua China launched a Long March rocket last week with a satellite Western analysts believe will conduct all-weather global radar surveillance for the Chinese military. The Long March 2C rocket lifted off at [&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":[135,205,1742],"class_list":["post-16823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-china","tag-long-march","tag-yaogan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16823"}],"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=16823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}