China has launched one other latest Yaogan reconnaissance satellite.
A Long March 4C rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center within the Gobi Desert at 4:15 p.m. EDT on Sept. 26 (2015 GMT; 4:15 a.m. Beijing Time on Sept. 27).
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced the successful launch inside an hour of liftoff, confirming the previously undisclosed payload as Yaogan 33 (04) — meaning a fourth satellite within the Yaogan 33 series.
The launch follows the liftoff of the third Yaogan 33 satellite earlier this month. That spacecraft also flew on a Long March 4C that launched from Jiuquan.
Yaogan 33 (04) has been tracked in a near-polar, 422-by-428 mile-high (680 by 688 kilometers) orbit by the U.S. Space Force.
As with the previous Yaogan missions, no details of the spacecraft were revealed. Chinese state media stated that the satellite might be used for “scientific experiments, land resources surveys, crop yield estimation and disaster prevention and relief.”
Earlier reporting suggests the Yaogan 33 group are a series of space-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites. SAR satellites can obtain detailed images of the bottom through clouds and through the night.
Yaogan satellites are, on the whole, classified Chinese distant sensing satellites considered by Western observers to be for military purposes.
The launch was China’s forty fifth of 2023. It follows per week after the country’s first launch failure of the yr, when a Ceres-1 solid rocket operated by the business outfit Galactic Energy failed to succeed in orbit.