2nd Ld Writethru: China launches new satellite for civilian hi-res mapping

China launched a new civilian high-resolution mapping satellite on Monday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi Province.

The 2.7-tonne Ziyuan III 02 satellite took off on the back of a Long March 4B rocket at 11:17 a.m. Beijing time, according to the center. It was the 228th mission flight by a Long March carrier rocket.

Also on board the rocket were two NewSat satellites from Uruguay. All three satellites have entered preset orbits, the Taiyuan center said in a statement.

Ziyuan III 02 will be used in land resource surveys, natural disaster prevention, agricultural development, water resources management and urban planning, among other tasks. It is the second satellite in a remote-sensing mapping system China plans to build by 2030, according to earlier reports.

It will join its predecessor Ziyuan III 01, launched in January 2012, in the same orbit to form a network and capture high-definition, 3-D images and multispectral data.

According to Cao Haiyi, chief designer of the Ziyuan III satellites, the new satellite is able to collect 3-D images of objects 2.5 meters or longer, and reduce deviation of vertical positioning to one meter using an onboard laser range finder.

Previously, Ziyuan III 01 could only resolve to about four meters in 3-D imaging and five meters in vertical measurement.

Together, the two Ziyuan III satellites boast a "revisit time," the time elapsed between observations of the same point on Earth, of around three days, down from five to six days when only Ziyuan III 01 was operating.

"Technical indicators of the Ziyuan III satellites are on par with their most advanced peers anywhere in the world," Cao said.

Li Mingde, deputy head of the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, said the Ziyuan III 01 satellite has already provided image data for more than 30 countries and regions.

"In terms of image resolution and accuracy, we are on the same level with commercial satellites of other countries, but we boast considerable advantage in terms of pricing and applicability," Li said.

The launch of the new satellite is expected to make Ziyuan III even more competitive globally.

Li said the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation is likely to approve the Ziyuan III 03 and 04 projects starting from the second half of this year.

By 2020, China should have launched Ziyuan III 03 and a Gaofen-7 high-resolution remote sensing satellite, he said, adding that the country will also accelerate development of a home-made interference radar satellite and a carbon monitoring satellite to observe the land-based ecosystem. Endi