On June 11 at 03:03 UTC, a Chinese Long March 2D rocket launched four satellites into a Sun-synchronous orbit from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.

The primary payload was Beijing-3, a commercial remote sensing satellite. It will be used for “land and resources management, agricultural resources survey, ecological environment monitoring, comprehensive urban applications, and other fields.”

Also on board was Heisi-2, a nanosatellite developed for remote sensing of coastal regions including shallow seas and inland water bodies.

The third payload was Yangwang-1, a commercial satellite that will develop technology to be used for future asteroid mining. Yangwang means “look up,” and the satellite is a small telescope described by the manufacturer as a “little Hubble” — although your writing team was unable to determine the actual optical system used. The telescope is sensitive to visible and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The final satellite is Space Experiment 1 Tianjian. It will be used to train satellite operators and also demonstrate a new satellite health management system that is fault-tolerant.

More Information

CASC press release

CASC satellite info

Launch video