China on Wednesday successfully launched a pair of high-resolution remote sensing satellites capable of providing high-quality commercial images.
The satellites were launched on Wednesday from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in Shanxi Province. The satellites, SuperView-1 01/02, blasted off at 11:23 am Beijing time on the back of a Long March 2D rocket.
They are able to provide commercial images at 0.5-meter resolution. The satellites launch followed release of a white paper on Tuesday which said China plans to form a BeiDou network consisting of 35 satellites for global navigation services by 2020. It is expected to compete with America’s Global Positioning System (GPS).