China Launches New Group Of Remote-Sensing Satellites

JIUQUAN, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) — China successfully sent a new group of remote-sensing satellites into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Saturday. The four satellites of PIESAT-2 were launched at 11:39 a.m. (Beijing Time) by a Long March-2C carrier rocket and entered its planned orbit successfully. They will mainly provide commercial remote-sensing data services. The launch was the 544th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series. In March 2023, China launched PIESAT-1 or Hongtu-1, a wheel-like formation of four satellites, the first formation of its kind in the world. They later successfully obtained high-precision terrain mapping data products using the multi-baseline interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology, marking China’s first in-orbit application of such a mapping system.