Gaofen-6 to support agri research
CHINA has launched a new Earth observation satellite, Gaofen-6, which will be mainly used in agricultural resources research and disaster monitoring.
The Gaofen-6 was launched on a Long March-2D rocket on Saturday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. A scientific experiment satellite named Luojia-1 was sent into space at the same time.
It was the 276th mission of the Long March rocket series.
Weighing 1,064 kilograms and with a designed life of eight years, Gaofen-6 has a similar function to that of Gaofen-1 satellite, but with better cameras and its highresolution images can cover a large area of the Earth, according to the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
Gaofen-6 can observe chlorophyll and other nutritional content of crops, and help to estimate yields of crops such as corn, rice, soybeans, cotton and peanuts, said Tong Xudong, chief engineer of the Gaofen series satellites. Its data will also be applied in monitoring agricultural disasters such as droughts and floods, evaluation of agricultural projects and surveying of forest and wetland resources.
Developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp, it will form a constellation with other Gaofen satellites in orbit. Gaofen-1, launched in April 2013, can cover the globe in just four days. Gaofen-2 is accurate to 0.8 meters in full color and can collect multispectral images of objects greater than 3.2m in length.
Gaofen-4 is China’s first geosynchronous orbit high-definition optical imaging satellite. Gaofen-3 is China’s first synthetic aperture radar-imaging satellite. Gaofen-5 has the highest spectral resolution of China’s remote sensing satellites.