China's First Ocean Observation Satellites Go into Service

Two ocean observation satellites, HY-1C and HY-2B, were delivered in-orbit on June 28, the beginning of China's first ocean observation satellite operations.

The two satellites represent the country's highest level of space-based marine remote sensing.

The HY-1C was launched on Sept 7, 2018 and is expected to serve for five years.

It can collect water color and temperatures of the global ocean over 24 hours, multispectral information with a 50-meter resolution ratio and high accuracy and identifying information of ships at sea.

It will work together with the HY-1D in the future to offer monitoring services covering the whole world twice a day, which will greatly improve the survey and supervision capacity of jurisdictional sea and coastal zones and provide scientific data for research on the global oceans and polar regions.

In addition, the global monitoring service will meet the demands of various industrial fields like environmental protection, housing and urban-rural development, traffic, agriculture and emergency management.

Generally developed by the Fifth Institute of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the HY-2B was launched on Oct 25, 2018.

It is China's first satellite for marine dynamic environment monitoring and will operate together with HY-2C and HY-2D in the future.

With a designed life of five years, the HY-2B can obtain data of various ocean dynamic parameters including global wind vectors, heights and temperatures of the sea surface as well as wave heights.

The data will be used in warning and forecasting of catastrophic sea conditions and other fields like meteorology, agriculture and emergency management.

According to the two satellites' in-orbit performance in the past six months, the satellite platform and the loading system, the terrestrial integration system and the ground system met requirements and the data satisfied the demands of different industries.

Ling Yueming, vice minister of the Ministry of Natural Resources, said China will take advantage of both land and ocean observation satellites and create a network for natural resource monitoring, which will support ecological protection.

China will promote satellite data sharing in environmental protection, transportation and agriculture as well as other industries, he added.

(Executive editor: Hao Wen)