14 DAY TRIAL // This year's sixth Chinese spy satellite was launched into orbit on Monday, from the Taiyuan launching center in northern China's Shanxi province, on a Long March 4C rocket.
This is the tenth Yaogan mission, and follows the March launch of three spacecrafts, that are believed to be naval observation satellites.
China announced the launch with only 24 hours in advance, following the official policy for most military payloads and the state-run news agency Xinhua, stated that Yaogan 10 will carry out land surveys, scientific experiments, estimate crop yields and help predict and respond to natural disasters.
The liftoff took place at 6:49 pm EDT and, according to independent tracking data cited by SPACE.com, the spacecraft was placed into orbit at an altitude of about 380 miles and an inclination of 97.8 degrees.
The Yaogan Weixng or “Remote Sensing Satellite” series began launching in April 2006 and many say that it is a fleet of high-resolution optical and radar reconnaissance satellites, a military operation designed to observe locations regardless of weather and lighting conditions.
As Chinese media said that these satellites are for “scientific experiments, land survey, crop yield assessment, and disaster monitoring” purposes, sinodefence.com claims that they are operated by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and they provide high-resolution imagery intelligence for civil and military missions.
Two types of RSS satellites have been identified so far, the electro-optical digital imaging variant developed by CASC 5th Academy and synthetic aperture radar imaging variant developed by CASC 8th Academy.
The first one was launched aboard CZ-2C/D rockets from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) and the second one was put into orbit by CZ-4B/C rockets launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC).
China sent its first man-made satellite into space in 1970 and by December 2008 it has conducted 115 launches of which 103 were completely successful.
Monday's launch was the 38th launch worldwide, that has reached the orbit in 2010.