China on 28
th Dec 2016 successfully launched a pair of high-resolution remote sensing satellites to get commercial images.
The satellites were launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in Shanxi Province.
The satellites, SuperView-1 01/02, blasted off at 11:23 am Beijing time on the back of a Long March 2D rocket.
They are able to provide commercial images at 0.5-meter resolution.
The satellites launch followed release of a white paper on 27
th Dec which said China plans to form a BeiDou network consisting of 35 satellites for global navigation services by 2020.
It is expected to compete with America's Global Positioning system.
China plans to start providing basic services to countries along the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-century Maritime Silk Road in 2018, it said.
Besides satellite services, the paper said China will launch a lunar probe in 2018 to achieve world's first soft landing on the far side of the moon.
Super View 1 01/02- GaoJing-1, also known as SuperView-1 is a constellation of Chinese civilian remote sensing satellites.
- It is operated by Beijing Space View Tech Co Ltd.
- Constellation initially consists of two satellites.
- It operates at an altitude of 500 km and provides imagery with 0.5 m panchromatic resolution and 2 m multispectral resolution.
- The swath width is 12 km and the satellites are spaced by 180° on the same orbit.
- The first pair was launched on 28 December 2016 on a CZ-2D (2) rocket. A second group of two satellite of this type is planned for 2017,
- This brings the constellation to four satellites phased 90° from each other on the same orbit.
