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Further Reading

Yaogan 1 - 9 Ongoing RECSAT Series  

Chinese Military Remote Sensing Satellite Series

By Charles P. Vick

Senior Technical Intelligence Analyst

The First Yaogan-1 remote sensing satellite was launched on a Long March-4B booster while the Yaogan-2 was launched on a Long March 2D. Subsequently the Yaogan-3 was launched on the Long March-4C followed by the Yaogan-4 launched on a Long March -4B and Yaogan-5 flew on a Long March 4B. The differences in the launch vehicles used and their payload capacity, launch site reflect the variable nature of the systems carries by these remote sensing sun synchronous orbit spacecraft. Some have carried radar surveillance imaging payloads (SAR’s) when launched from Taiyuan while the film video imaging spacecraft are flown from Jiuquan. They all seem to reflect the military remote sensing nature of the spacecraft missions. China continues to characterize the series as conducting data collection, transmissions for earth resources environmental surveillance protection urban planning and crop estimates as well as disaster reduction scientific experimentation. The descriptions suggest that the system is in fact a low resolution general reconnaissance survey systems platform that uses both radar and film or video imaging for cross reference. Whether they are operating in pairs is uncertain but it seems to suggested and that by operating a photo imaging as well as a radar imaging satellite that could in fact accomplish the task of overlaying the images of the same areas with the same size images using both systems to reveal more details.

Satellite Series