China launched what it describes as an experimental communications technology satellite late last week.
A Long March 7A rocket lifted off from the coastal Wenchang Satellite Launch Center at 10:54 a.m. EDT (1454 GMT, or 10:54 p.m. Beijing Time) on Friday (Nov. 3). The payload was revealed to be Tongxin Jishu Shiyan Weixing-10 (TJS-10) by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) when the organization announced launch success inside an hour of liftoff.
Chinese state media outlet Xinhua described the satellite as being “mainly used for multi-band and high-speed communication technology experiments.”
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The satellite is in a geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) and can insert itself into the geostationary belt, around 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth, within the near future.
Neither CASC nor state media provided any additional details of the satellite. The lack of knowledge and on-orbit activities of TJS satellites have caught the eye of analysts and should be a canopy name for satellites for a variety of various uses.
TJS-3, each nominally and described as a communication test satellite, launched in December 2018. It has, nonetheless, apparently made close approaches to, and checked out, satellites owned by other countries. Other satellites within the TJS series are speculated to be for signals intelligence and missile early warning tests.
The satellite was, like earlier TJS satellites, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), certainly one of the most important space subsidiaries of CASC.
The Long March 7A is a 197-foot-tall (60 meters) variant of the Long March 7 rocket and is designed to send spacecraft into GTO. It is usually a nontoxic alternative to the workhorse Long March 3B. The usual Long March 7 is used to send cargo spacecraft to China’s Tiangong space station.
Friday’s launch was China’s 51st of the yr. Chinese plans released early this yr indicate that the country is aiming to launch greater than 200 spacecraft on around 70 missions across 2023.