Our first launch this week is the Yaogan 31-03 mission that took off on February 24 at 20:22 UTC, atop a Long March 4C rocket from pad 603 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi desert in northwestern China.

This was the third group of three Yaogan 31 satellites launched for this constellation, with the first two batches going up on April 10, 2018, and on January 29 of this year.

“Yaogan” translates to “Remote Observing,” so it makes sense that the China Academy of Space Technology stated that they “will be mainly used to carry out electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.” Not much else is publicly known about the Yaogan satellites, but a recent article in SpaceNews suggests they may also have more covert purposes, such as reconnaissance and surveillance.

More Information

CASC press release (Chinese)

Xinhua News article (Chinese)

SpaceNews article

Yaogan info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Launch video