China's Kuaizhou 11 rocket launches two satellites

China launched a Kuaizhou 11 carrier rocket on Thursday morning, deploying two privately developed satellites into space, according to Expace, the rocket's developer.

The rocket blasted off at 10:40 am from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and successfully placed the two synthetic aperture radar satellites into their predetermined orbit. This marks the seventh flight of the Kuaizhou 11 family and China's 67th space mission this year.

According to Expace, a State-owned rocket maker based in Wuhan, Hubei province, the Kuaizhou 11 is 25 meters tall and has a diameter of 2.2 meters. With a liftoff weight of 78 metric tons, the rocket can place a 1-ton payload into a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers or a 1.5-ton spacecraft into a typical low-Earth orbit.

The satellites, built by SpaceTY, a private satellite operator in Changsha, Hunan province, are tasked with obtaining remote-sensing data to support public-service operations such as mountain geological disaster monitoring, urban architectural hazards identification, hydropower engineering inspection, and traffic line safety protection.