On January 29th at 04:47 UTC, a Long March 4C took off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. Onboard was the Yaogan-31 02 mission, a set of three Earth observation satellites. These will join the existing constellation of Yaogan satellites, seven of which launched in 2020.

“Yaogan” translates to “Remote Observing,” so it makes sense that the China Academy of Space Technology stated that the new satellites “will be mainly used to carry out electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.” Not much else is publicly known about the Yaogan satellites, and news coverage of the launch wasn’t extremely detailed: just a brief mention of the mission and that the launch was successful.

More Information

CAST press release (Chinese)

Space China press release (Chinese)

People’s Daily article

Yaogan info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Launch video