Artist’s rendition of satellites orbiting the Earth – rottenman/123RF Stock Photo
On the 7th September 2020 China successfully launched the Gaofen 11-2 optical Earth Observation (EO) satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center aboard a Long March 4B rocket. This satellite, which forms part of the China High-Resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS), will work in tandem with Gaofen 11-1 that was launched in July 2018.
Whilst the exact specifications of the instrument onboard is not known, it is believed to be a high resolution optical EO satellite collecting data for applications such as land surveys, urban planning, road network design, agriculture yield monitoring, and disaster relief.
Unfortunately, five days later there was also a launch failure for China when an EO satellite was lost on the 12th September. The Kuaizhou-1A rocket, which took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China, failed to get the Jilin-1 Gaofen 02C high-resolution optical EO satellite into its expected 535 km orbit. The failure reason is unknown, with official reports indicating that there was abnormal performance in the rocket that is being investigated.
Jilin-1 Gaofen 02C, also known as Neimenggu-1 or Inner Mongolia 1, was due to be the first of three launches for the Jilin-1 constellation in little more than a week, Gaofen-02D and Gaofen-02F were due to take off on the 17th and 22nd September respectively – although these are now expected to be delayed. Gaofen-02A and Gaofen-02B from the Jilin-1 constellation were launched last year, on the 13th November and 7th December respectively. Sadly, Gaofen-2E was also lost earlier this year in July during its attempted launch.
More positively for China, and linking to last week’s blog on the heating in the Arctic, Beijing Normal University recently announced that the polar-observing satellite BNU-1, also known as Ice Pathfinder, has acquired 2,501 images of the polar regions since its launch on the 12th September 2019.
The small 16 kg satellite carries two instruments:
- Wide-format camera capturing the visible bands, and an infra-red one, with a spatial resolution of 80 m and a swath width of 745 km.
- Optical camera with a resolution of 8 m and a swath width of 25 km.
Some images were released last week by the University and they are all freely available to registered users at the website. The University is keen to work with researchers around to the world to explore the data. Around 40% of the images are of the Arctic, with a further third covering the Antarctic. The satellite operations team leader, Chen Zhuoqi, also noted that the satellite had acquired images of Greenland.
Less positive news arose about another polar EO satellite as Russia announced on Monday the postponement of the launch of its Arktika-M satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The new launch date is unknown for the satellite which would operate in a highly elliptical twelve-hour Molniya orbit focusing on collecting metrological and hydrological data for the Arctic region.
The main instruments the satellite will carry will be a MSU-GS/A multi-purpose imager, also known as Electro-L Imager for Arktika, which will have ten bands split across the visible, near-infra red, medium wave infra-red and thermal parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Â In addition, the satellite is expected to carry a radiation spectrometer, a magnetometer and detector of galactic cosmic rays. A second Arktika-M satellite is planned for launch in 2023.
This week was a roller-coaster for the EO satellite community!
