China launches satellites for UAE, Egypt, Nepal in commercial space mission
Technology
After delivering the nine satellites to their preset orbits, the launch mission was declared a complete success.
BEIJING (APP) - China on Wednesday launched the Lijian-1 Y11 carrier rocket with nine satellites onboard, including three international payloads for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Nepal.
After delivering the nine satellites to their preset orbits, the launch mission was declared a complete success.
According to the rocket developer CAS Space, most of the satellites, owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will support applications including urban planning, disaster prevention and mitigation, water resources, and meteorology.
According to Global Times, the “UAE-813 Satellite” launched in the Wednesday mission was developed by the Shanghai-based Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of CAS. It is a hyperspectral Earth observation satellite. It carries primary payloads including a hyperspectral imager, a panchromatic camera, and an atmospheric polarization corrector, along with the construction of corresponding ground systems.
The core aim of the project is to build hyperspectral remote sensing capabilities, thereby providing effective support for environmental monitoring and scientific research, according to the CAS Space.
The SPNEX satellite, also aboard the Lijian-1 rocket on Wednesday in the flight mission, was jointly developed by the Egyptian Space Agency and the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology. It carries plasma diagnostic and Earth observation payloads, with its primary mission of monitoring the impacts of climate change and ionospheric variations.
The Slippers2Sat (S2S) satellite is an educational project jointly launched by Antarikchya Pratisthan Nepal and the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation. The project is dedicated to inspiring, motivating, and providing educational support to marginalized groups, low income communities and indigenous populations in Nepal.
The project’s main goal is to help Nepali junior-high students independently design and build Nepal’s third 1U CubeSat while demonstrating and promoting a software-based digital repeater system in amateur radio bands for global amateur-radio users.
CAS Space has now served a total of 32 satellite customers, 26 domestic and six international. Its launch-service footprint extends across China, Europe, North America, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and other countries and regions.
