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China has added a brand new satellite tv for pc to its fleet of meteorological spacecraft.
A Lengthy March 4C rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite tv for pc Launch Heart within the Gobi Desert on Aug. 2 at 11:47 p.m. EDT (0347 GMT; 11:47 a.m. Beijing Time on Aug. 3). Orange smoke from the rocket’s hypergolic propellant billowed out upon ignition, with purple exhaust pushing the rocket into blue skies. Insulation tiles, used to maintain propellant at optimum temperatures, fell from the rocket because it climbed.
Aboard was the Fengyun-3F satellite tv for pc, which joins the China Meteorological Administration’s fleet of Fengyun satellites in low Earth and geosynchronous orbits. It replaces the Fengyun-3C satellite tv for pc, wihch launched in 2013.
Associated: China’s Lengthy March rocket household: Historical past and photographs
Fengyun-3F carries a set of 10 payloads for climate knowledge, together with new devices for monitoring ozone. The satellite tv for pc had a mass of round 5,070 kilos (2,300 kilograms) at launch and is predicted to function for round a decade. The satellite tv for pc was developed by the state-owned Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Know-how (SAST).
Chinese language state media report that the satellite tv for pc might be used to gather knowledge for local weather change, atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric atmosphere analysis.
U.S. House Pressure situational consciousness tracked the satellite tv for pc in an almost round 501-mile-high (806 kilometers) orbit with an inclination of 98 levels, seeing it orbit near the poles.
That path sends the satellite tv for pc throughout the equator at 10:00 a.m. native time, which means it’s working in a “morning orbit.”
China is at present the one nation with 4 near-Earth orbit meteorological satellites in sun-synchronous early morning, morning, afternoon and non-sun-synchronous orbits, based on an article posted by the World Meteorological Group (WMO).
The launch was China’s thirty second orbital launch of 2023. The nation plans to launch round 200 spacecraft on Lengthy March rockets this yr, with Chinese language business launches sending further satellites to area.
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