On March 13 at 02:19 UTC, the Yaogan 31-04 mission took off atop a Long March 4C rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China.

This was the fourth trio of Yaogan 31 satellites launched for this constellation, with the first three batches going up on April 10, 2018, and earlier this year on January 29 and February 24.

“Yaogan” translates to “Remote Observing,” so it makes sense that the China Academy of Space Technology stated after one of the previous launches that the satellites “will be mainly used to carry out electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests.”

More Information

CAST press release (Chinese)

Yaogan info page (Gunter’s Space Page)

Launch video