Errymath: gaofen-3

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<img alt="https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/launch-of-gaofen-3.png" height="361" src="https://tiananmenstremendousachievements.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/launch-of-gaofen-3.png" width="640" /> <br />
A Long March 4C rocket carrying a Gaofen-3 imaging satellite lifts off 
from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre on Wednesday (August 10). 
Photo: Xinhua<br />
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<b>The Gaofen-3 can provide all-weather images day or night.</b><br />

Designed by CAST (China Academy of Space Technology), Gaofen-3 employs 
the CS-L3000B bus configured with multi-polarized C-band SAR at 
meter-level resolution.<br />
The new satellite has a designed lifespan of eight years and will mainly
 be used by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) of China.<br />
Development of the new satellite was initiated in December 2010, with 
the engineering development beginning in September 2013. The satellite 
was completed in March 2016.<br />
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Gaofen (meaning “High Resolution”) is a series of civilian Earth 
observation satellites developed and launched for the state-sponsored 
program known as the China High-definition Earth Observation System 
(CHEOS).<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
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SAR Earth Observation Satellite with 1-m resolution</div>
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The satellite, which is capable of penetrating clouds and even the 
ground to monitor areas of interest at up to one metre resolution was 
launched aboard a Long March 4C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch
 Centre in Shanxi province. The synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, on the
 Gaofen-3 emits powerful electromagnetic microwaves to its target area 
and generates high resolution images from the waves as they bounce back 
from the surface or interior of the target. The Gaofen-3’s antennas 
measure 18 metres, longer than any other Chinese satellite.<br />
<br />According to state media, it would be the first Chinese satellite to 
provide civilian users with sharp satellite images day and night, either
 on land or sea, under all weather conditions including rain, haze, smog
 and dust storms, as it works independently of natural light and heat.<br />

It would be used for advance warning of disasters, weather 
forecasting, water resource assessment and monitoring of maritime 
rights.<br />
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 <img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015-12-28-160731-350x251.jpg" height="286" src="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/2015-12-28-160731-350x251.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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The Gaofen-3 marked a “small but important step” in China’s long 
march to become a space power, said professor Wu Shunjun, a radar 
technology expert at the National Lab of Radar Signal Processing in 
Xidian University, Xian.<br />
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The SAR instrument use domestic technology to allow the satellite to 
search for targets of interest in a large area at high speed. Once 
locking onto a target, it could immediately shift to scrutiny mode for 
non-stop, close observations at high resolution for more than an hour 
during a fly-by.<br />
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The Gaofen- 3 has 12 different modes, each with hardware and software
 settings fine-tuned for specific tasks. In comparison, the PAZ 
satellite, to be launched by the European Space Agency later this year 
to supply images at similar resolution, only has three modes.<br />

Thus, the Gaofen-3 would “serve many the different needs of many different users,” Wu told the South China Morning Post.<br />
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China had previously launched many SAR satellites, some that probably
 provided higher resolution, but most were reserved for military or 
government reconnaissance purposes including tracking suspicious 
vehicles in areas of unrest in Xinjiang or monitoring vessels in 
disputed waters in the South China Sea.<br />

Civilian users such as research institutes studying the environment 
or sea level increases caused by climate change had to rely on images 
provided by foreign satellite service companies.<br />
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Liu Jianqiang, deputy director of the National Satellite Ocean 
Application Service centre in Beijing, told Xinhua in 2014 that the 
search for the missing MH370 aircraft would have been easier if 
searchers had the Gaofen-3, which was then still under development at 
the China Academy of Space Technology.<br />

Plane debris floating on the surface of the ocean was always on the 
move and often obscured by waves and weather and therefore impossible to
 spot with conventional optical sensors on satellites at night, he said.<br />
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China would need at least three satellites like the Gaofen-3 in space
 to keep a constant eye on a sensitive area in the world’s oceans 
because the width of a single satellite’s scanning band was limited, and
 the radar could only light on an area during its fly-by, Gao said.<br />
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The Gaofen-3 was expected to be in service for eight years, nearly 
twice as long as other Gaofen series earth observation satellites 
operating in lower earth orbits, where drag was considerable due to the 
close proximity to the earth’s atmosphere.<br />
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The Gaofen project, also known as the China High-definition Earth 
Observation System, intends to establish a large network of earth 
observation instruments by 2020 for real time, all-weather, global 
surveillance on various platforms including satellites, stratospheric 
airships and planes. <i>SCMP</i><br />
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<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="http://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/atrain-879x485.jpg" src="http://spacenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/atrain-879x485.jpg" /><br />
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<a href="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/08/long-march-4c-launches-gaofen-3/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Gaofen Series</b></span></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b></span><br />
Gaofen-1 uses a CAST2000 bus, configured with one 2 meter panchromatic, 
an 8 meter multi-spectral camera and one 16m multispectral 
medium-resolution and wide-view camera. The satellite realizes an 
integration of imaging capacity at medium and high spatial resolution 
and with large swath, with designed lifespan of over 5 years. It was 
launched on April 26, 2013.<br />
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Gaofen-2 employs the CS-L3000A bus, configured with one 1 meter 
panchromatic/4m multi-spectral camera, with designed lifespan of over 5 
years. The satellite was launched on August 19, 2014.<br />
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<img alt="[IMG]" class="bbCodeImage LbImage" data-url="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-09-221919-350x239.jpg" height="273" src="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/2016-08-09-221919-350x239.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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Gaofen-4 was developed by CAST and is based on the new GEO 
remote-sensing satellite bus. It has orbital mass of 4,600 kg and was 
designed for a life span of 8 years. The satellite was placed into orbit
 by a Long March-3B launch vehicle from the Xichang Satellite Launch 
Centre on 29 December, 2015.<br />
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The future spacecraft, Gaofen-5, sports a SAST5000B bus and is 
configured with six types of payloads, including visible and short-wave 
infra hyper-spectral camera, spectral imager, greenhouse gas detector, 
atmospheric environment infrared detector at very high spectral 
resolution, differential absorption spectrometer for atmospheric trace 
gas, and multi-angle polarization detector.<br />
It is designed for 8 years and is scheduled to launch in 2017.<br />
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On June 26, 2015, China launched the Gaofen-8 satellite. Developed by 
the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the 
satellite is part of a civilian program whose aim is to facilitate 
climate surveying, disaster response, precision agriculture mapping, 
urban planning and road network design.<br />
Its imagery will be mostly used by the Ministry of Land and Resources, 
the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and the Ministry of 
Agriculture.<br />
The satellite was launched from the Taiyuan Satellite 
Launch Center using a Long March-4B rocket.<br />
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On September 14, 2015, another Gaofen satellite, Gaofen-9, was launched 
from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, using a Long March-2D. 
Possibly a civilian version of the Yaogan Weixing-2 (Jianbing-6) 
satellite, Gaofen-9 will provide sub-meter class resolution optical 
images for city planning, road network design, land ownership 
determination etc. purposes. <i>nasaspaceflight.com</i><br />
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Gaofen-3 Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging satellite

A Long March 4C rocket carrying a Gaofen-3 imaging satellite lifts off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre on Wednesday (Augus...

Errymath

Gaofen-3 Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging satellite

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