A Long March-2D carrier rocket blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on March 15, successfully delivering the Siwei Gaojing-3 02 and the Tianyan-23 satellites into orbit.
The Siwei Gaojing-3 02 satellite, developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s China Siwei Surveying and Mapping Technology Co., Ltd, is a high-resolution, wide-swath optical satellite. It features an ultra-wide swath of 130 kilometers and provides 0.5-meter resolution imagery with nine-band multispectral data, catering to applications in digital agriculture, smart water management and digital cities.
It can support land resource surveys, urban management, environmental protection, disaster prevention and mitigation and maritime security, offering high-precision and real-time spatiotemporal information services.
As the sister satellite of Siwei Gaojing-3 01, the newly launched 02 satellite enhances imaging capabilities by integrating ultra-wide swath imaging with multi-spectral observation. The in-orbit networking of both satellites significantly improves data acquisition efficiency — extending China’s key regional annual coverage to nationwide semi-annual coverage and enabling quarterly and monthly coverage for major provinces and cities, thereby enhancing regional service capabilities.
The Tianyan-23 satellite is primarily designed for acquiring panchromatic and multispectral images, as well as video data of target areas, supporting dynamic monitoring of land resources.
The Long March-2D rocket is a two-stage, liquid-fueled launch vehicle capable of deploying single or multiple payloads into various orbits, with a sun-synchronous orbit payload capacity of 1.3 tons. In this mission, the rocket implemented range fairing jettisoning technology for the first time, reducing the longitudinal drop zone of the payload fairing by approximately 20 kilometers, thereby mitigating pressure on the drop zone.
Both satellites and the rocket were developed under the management of the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.
It was the 564th flight mission of the Long March series rockets.
(Executive editor: Wang Ruoting)
