New commercial satellite launched in North China

XI'AN - A new commercial satellite was successfully launched from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China's Shanxi province Friday.

The "BDSAGR-1" satellite has entered its scheduled orbit and is expected to provide accurate remote sensing data on crops in the river basins in North China and help modernize and digitalize China's agricultural industry.

The satellite belongs to the first phase of the "Guozhiheng Agricultural Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation" project jointly engineered by GasTianta and GZH-HNJ BDS AGR Co., Ltd.

Zeng Weigang, general manager of GasTianta, said the satellite was designed to operate in a sun-synchronous orbit with an orbit period of 96 minutes.

Zeng added that the project will eventually form a remote sensing satellite constellation consisting of 40 satellites covering the whole country.

"As a traditional agricultural country, there is still much room for improvement in the application of remote sensing satellites in China's agricultural field," said Zeng.

"We will continue to deepen the R&D and marketing of commercial aerospace technology and explore the application of remote sensing satellite technology in areas such as agricultural resources investigation, crop monitoring, disaster monitoring and food safety traceability," he added.