China's GalaxySpace launched four PIESAT-2 satellites aboard a Long March 2D carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province at 6:50 p.m. local time on Saturday, Sept. 19, according to ECNS, the English-language site of China News Service. GalaxySpace describes itself as a Beijing-based private satellite company.
The four satellites carry high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) along with onboard intelligent processing and mission-planning payloads, letting them process remote-sensing data in orbit in real time. Duan Xiao, chief designer of GalaxySpace's SAR satellites, said the capability lets the satellites process and extract information from remote-sensing data while still in orbit, reducing the data backhaul pressure on satellite-ground links and speeding up processing and service response.
GalaxySpace has now launched 53 independently developed satellites in total, more than 10 of them SAR satellites, according to ECNS. The Long March 2D rocket, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology and propelled by liquid propellants, can deliver a 1.3-metric-ton spacecraft to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers. Saturday's launch was the 668th flight of the Long March rocket series.