HELSINKI — China added to its fleet of secretive meteorological satellites with the launch of Yunhai-3 (02) late Tuesday.
A Lengthy March 6A rocket lifted off from Taiyuan Satellite tv for pc Launch Middle, north China, at 6:51 p.m. Japanese (2251 UTC), March 26 . The China Aerospace Science and Expertise Corp. (CASC) later confirmed launch success, revealing the beforehand unspoken payload to be Yunhai-3 (02).
The launch plans had been initially revealed by airspace closure notices. Few particulars concerning the satellite tv for pc have been made accessible.
China’s area authorities and state media describe the satellite tv for pc briefly as for atmospheric and marine surroundings surveys, area surroundings monitoring, catastrophe prevention and discount and scientific experiments.
The Yunhai sequence are, nonetheless, assessed to be army meteorological satellites by some Western analysts. These are believed to incorporate International Navigation Satellite tv for pc System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) satellites to gather atmospheric knowledge. China additionally operates civilian Fengyun meteorological satellites.
The primary Yunhai-3 satellite tv for pc, launched in November 2022 on an earlier Lengthy March 6A, is cataloged by the U.S. Area Power’s 18th Area Protection Squadron (SDS) in a near-polar, close to round 849-kilometer-altitude orbit.
That first Yunhai-3 launch noticed the breakup of the Lengthy March 6A’s higher stage. 9 of 37 items of particles tracked by 18 SDS from the occasion stay in orbit.
New Lengthy March rockets
Tuesday’s mission was the fifth launch of the Lengthy March 6A, lifting off from a particularly constructed launch pad at Taiyuan spaceport. The 50-meter-long, 530-metric-ton rocket options two kerosene-liquid oxygen phases and 4 strong propellant facet boosters. It’s the first Chinese language rocket to make use of a mixture of liquid and strong phases and boosters.
The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Expertise (SAST), the rocket’s producer and subordinate to China’s principal area contractor, CASC, plans to launch the primary Lengthy March 6C rocket later this yr. It will use the Lengthy March 6A core stage with out the strong boosters.
The three.35-meter-diameter Lengthy March 6A sequence bears little resemblance to the two.25-meter-diameter commonplace Lengthy March 6.
CASC acknowledged that Tuesday’s launch is the beginning of high-frequency launch of the Lengthy March 6 sequence this yr.
China has been introducing new, kerosene and liquid oxygen Lengthy March rockets since 2015. These are anticipated to ultimately change the getting old hypergolic and poisonous Lengthy March 2, 3 and 4 sequence rockets. To date nonetheless, China’s busiest spaceports—Jiuquan within the northwest and Xichang within the southwest—are able to launching hypergolic and strong Lengthy March rockets solely.
China is increasing its coastal Wenchang launch services to permit launches of the brand new Lengthy March 8 and business launchers. It will ease the bottleneck in launching newer Chinese language rockets.
Tuesday’s launch was China’s 14th orbital mission of 2024. It follows the launch of six Yunhai-2 sequence satellites final week. The nation is aiming to launch round 100 occasions throughout 2024. Round 70 might be performed by CASC, with SAST aiming to launch its new, 3.8-meter-diameter Lengthy March 12, beforehand known as the “XLV.” China’s business launch service suppliers are planning round 30 launches.
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