China launches seven satellites into orbit PHOTO

China successfully launched a Long March 6C carrier rocket on Tuesday, sending seven satellites into orbit, according to the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., the country’s leading space contractor.

The state-owned company said the 43-meter-tall rocket lifted off at 11:21 a.m. from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in Shanxi province and shortly afterwards placed the seven satellites into their designated orbits, Caliber.Az reports, citing China Daily.

Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the two-stage Long March 6C rocket has a diameter of 3.35 meters and is powered by three engines using liquid oxygen and kerosene.

The rocket has a liftoff weight of 215 metric tons and can carry about 2.4 tons of payload to a typical 500-kilometre sun-synchronous orbit, or up to 4 tons to a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 300 kilometres.

Three of the satellites — AirSat 14, AirSat 15 and Lingzhi-09 Thai CubeSat — were developed and manufactured by Beijing-based commercial space company GalaxySpace.

The Lingzhi-09 Thai CubeSat marks GalaxySpace’s first export of a complete satellite and ground system to an international customer. It is also the first time a Chinese commercial space company has provided a Southeast Asian country with a full-service package covering satellite development, launch and in-orbit delivery, according to GalaxySpace.

The AirSat 14 and 15 satellites were developed for AirSat, a satellite operator based in Jinan, Shandong province. Equipped with high-resolution synthetic aperture radar systems and dedicated space-based cloud payloads, the satellites are designed to form an integrated space-based information platform.

The mission also represents a major step forward for GalaxySpace in space-based computing, the company said.

GalaxySpace has so far launched more than 10 SAR satellites, bringing the number of satellites it has independently developed to 49.

By Bakhtiyar Abbasov