XICHANG (Xinhua): China launched a new satellite on Saturday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, reported Xinhua.
The satellite, Fengyun-4 03, was launched by a Long March-3B rocket at 12.07 am (Beijing Time) and has entered its planned orbit.
With the successful launch, China’s Fengyun family of meteorological satellites - now numbering more than 20 - has gained a new member regarded as the most capable to date in comprehensive observation.
According to the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST), the Fengyun-4 03 satellite is equipped with four Earth-observation instruments and two solar-observation instruments.
It features advanced capabilities, representing a significant upgrade in observational performance, detection parameters and data transmission efficiency.
Among its instruments, the advanced geostationary radiation imager can now perform a full-disk scan of Earth in just five minutes - three times faster than the previous 15-minute cycle - and is sensitive enough to detect atmospheric temperature variations as small as one-fiftieth of a degree Celsius from thousands of kilometres (km) away.
Another key payload, the geostationary interferometric infrared sounder, features improved spatial resolution - from 12 km to 8 km - and can map temperature and humidity across China in just one hour.
Its lightning imager captures 500 frames per second and can detect lightning events within a 30-gigabit-per-second data stream - a processing capability comparable to scanning 30 high-definition movies in a single second to pinpoint frames containing lightning signals.
According to the SAST, the Fengyun-4 series has progressively expanded China's meteorological observation capacities.
China launched the Fengyun-4 01 satellite in December 2016, followed by the Fengyun-4 02 in June 2021.
With the new Fengyun-4 03 satellite - capable of inter-satellite coordination, high-speed data transmission, and broadcasting - the three satellites will now operate as an integrated, coordinated observation network.
SAST said that this enhanced network will significantly improve China's capabilities in weather forecasting, meteorological disaster prevention, space-weather monitoring, and ecological-environment observation. -- Xinhua
