China launches new group of remote-sensing satellites

JIUQUAN -- China successfully sent a new group of remote-sensing satellites into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China on Saturday.

The four satellites of PIESAT-2 were launched at 11:39 am (Beijing Time) by a Long March 2C carrier rocket and entered its planned orbit successfully.

They will mainly provide commercial remote-sensing data services.

The launch was the 544th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.

In March 2023, China launched PIESAT-1 or Hongtu-1, a wheel-like formation of four satellites, the first formation of its kind in the world. They later successfully obtained high-precision terrain mapping data products using the multi-baseline interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technology, marking China's first in-orbit application of such a mapping system.