DgcityChina put three more remote-sensing satellites into orbit on the night of November 5, continuing a rapid launch cadence that has marked its space program through the autumn.
The satellites, numbered 07 through 09 in the Yaogan-51 group, lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province aboard a Long March 2C carrier rocket just before midnight Beijing time. Official statements said the craft entered their preset orbits as planned.
The mission was described as the 675th flight of a Long March carrier rocket, the workhorse family that carries out the bulk of China’s orbital launches. The Long March 2C, a two-stage liquid-fuelled rocket first flown in the 1980s, remains a frequent choice for medium payloads despite decades of service.
The new satellites are intended mainly for scientific experiments and electromagnetic environment detection, according to launch officials. Remote-sensing craft of the Yaogan series have carried a mix of missions over the years, including Earth observation, surveying and technical validation, with official descriptions typically kept general.
The launch fit a busy stretch. In the days around it, Chinese rockets also carried satellites for the SpaceSail broadband constellation, a set of smaller payloads on a commercial Ceres-2 rocket, and another batch of the state-owned SatNet internet constellation. The density of flights reflects both state and commercial operators moving in parallel.
The Xichang center, tucked into the hills of southwestern China, has long specialised in missions headed to geostationary and inclined orbits. Nighttime launches, with the rocket lighting the ridge lines around the pad, have become a familiar sight there as the manifest has tightened.
The broader numbers underscore that pace. By mid-November China had reached 80 orbital launch attempts for the year, running ahead of the total at the same point a year earlier and accounting for roughly 30 percent of all orbital launches worldwide. State missions like the Yaogan series and the build-out of the SatNet constellation account for much of the activity, but commercial vehicles are adding flights of their own, and another Long March mission was already being readied at Jiuquan within days of the Xichang liftoff.
