HELSINKI — China launched the first satellite of a remote sensing constellation for Pakistan late Thursday, with two domestic spacecraft also along for the ride.
A Long March 2D rocket lifted off at 11:07 p.m. Eastern, Jan. 16 (0407 UTC, Jan. 17) from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. Orange exhaust billowed out as the hypergolic launcher ignited its engines and insulation tiles fell away from the rocket as it climbed into blue skies above the spaceport.
The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) confirmed launch success, announcing the previously undisclosed payloads as being for Pakistan and Chinese commercial companies. The China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC), under CASC, arranged the combination of the international and domestic payloads. CGWIC signed a multi-launch service contract with Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) for launch of a remote sensing satellite constellation in 2022.
PRSC-EO1 is the first of a series of three optical remote sensing satellites for Pakistan, which will join the country’s existing remote sensing satellites, PRSS-1 and PakTES-1A, in orbit.
These satellites will provide data for the fields of land mapping, agriculture classification and assessment, urban and rural planning, environmental monitoring, natural disaster monitoring and management, surveying, natural resources protection and others uses, according to SUPARCO.
China and Pakistan have a close space relationship, and Pakistan signed up to China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) moon base project in October 2023.
The mission carried two further satellites. These are the DAO-1 (Tianlu-1) satellite, developed by Galaxy Space for the Jianghuai Frontier Innovation Technology Center, and the Blue Carbon-1 (Lantan-1) satellite, developed by Geespace, also known as Zhejiang Shikong Daoyu Technology Co., Ltd., for Hangzhou Dianzi University.
The launch was China’s third orbital launch attempt of the year. It follows the launch of the Shijian-25 spacecraft servicing satellite Jan. 6, which appears to be approaching the Shijian-21 space debris mitigation technology satellite launched in 2021, and the sea launch of 10 navigation augmentation satellites Jan. 13.
CASC has yet to publish an overview of China’s overall plans for the year, but it may once again attempt to reach around 100 launches, as targeted for 2024. Major missions for 2025 include crewed Shenzhou-20 and -21 missions and Tianzhou cargo spacecraft to the Tiangong space station and the Tianwen-2 near-Earth asteroid sample return mission. The latter is expected to launch around May.
China aims to debut a number of new Long March and potentially reusable commercial rockets during 2025. These include the Long March 8A and 12A, and Zhuque-3 (Landspace), Tianlong-3 (Space Pioneer), Pallas-1 (Galactic Energy) and Kinetica-2 (CAS Space) from commercial entities.
