China Successfully Launches First Operational Civil Optical Constellation

GF-1-02, 03 and 04 satellites ar being launched by a LM-4C launc vehicle

A Long March 4C launch vehicle lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 11: 22 Beijing time on March 31, placing GF-1-02, 03 and 04 three satellites into orbit precisely. The launch mission achieved a complete success.

The three satellites were developed by China Spacesat Co, Ltd., under the China Academy of Space Technology which will form China’s first operational civil optical constellation with high resolution.

The constellation is capable of working in multiple modes and has the advantage of high quality and high efficiency imaging. The three satellites can acquire rapidly continuous and stable global 2-meter panchromatic and 8-meter multiple spectral images over a long-period,achieving 15-day global coverage and 2-day revisit.

The GF-1-02, 03 and 04 satellites form an operational constellation together with the in-orbit GF-1-01 satellite for land resource survey and monitoring.This enables reduced global coverage period to 11 days and revisit time to 1 day and can revisit targeted areas in an emergency with a period of several hours thus enabling rapid mosaic imaging over the same area.

With the constellation, over 90% of the remote sensing data of scale 1: 25000- 1: 15000 used for land resources can be acquired indigenously, reducing the dependence on overseas data for major industries and users. The constellation contributed considerable operational optical satellite remote sensing data with high-precision for the third national land survey. The operational civil optical constellation data can be used in areas such as land resource surveys, monitoring,supervision and for emergencies, as well as for disaster mitigation, environmental protection, construction and transportation, agriculture, forestry, marine and mapping.

The LM-4C carrier rocket which carried out this launch mission was developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight. This was the first time the rocket launched three satellites in series from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.LM-4C was upgraded and optimized to meet this mission requirement, laying a solid foundation for future high-density launches. The rocket adopted the highest configuration of the LM-4C variant,nearly 49 meters, with three satellites installed in an envelope and two payload bays one above the other.

This was the 270th flight of the LM family launch vehicle.