Today's Edition
(XINHUA)
China launched a new Fengyun meteorological satellite into space on Saturday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the country's northwest.
A Long March-4C rocket carrying the Fengyun-3 08 satellite blasted off at 3:28am Beijing time, and sent into the preset orbit the satellite, which aims to contribute to a global green mission.
Both the rocket and the satellite were developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
The satellite will be mainly used for weather forecasting, atmospheric chemistry, and climate change monitoring. It operates in a sun-synchronous orbit and is equipped with nine remote sensing instruments, including a medium-resolution spectral imager, an infrared hyperspectral atmospheric detector, and a microwave imager, achieving high-precision global greenhouse gas detection within a 100-kilometre width, a scale not reached before.
Fengyun-3 08 will form a cluster with two other Fengyun satellites to achieve 100 percent global coverage of observation data. The network of satellites will reduce the update time of weather data required for numerical weather forecasting assimilation from six hours to four. It will extend the weather forecast by about 24 hours, and improve disaster monitoring efficiency by nearly 100 percent, significantly enhancing weather prediction and forecasting capabilities.
Long March-4C is a three-stage liquid-propellant carrier rocket capable of launching various types of satellites with different orbit requirement. It supports launch of single or multiple satellites in one mission.
The launch marks the 596th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.
