At AM11:17 Beijing Time (GMT+8) on May 30, 2016, China’s Long March 4B (LM-4B) Launch Vehicle successfully launched the Ziyuan III – 02 Satellite with two piggybacked satellites, NewSat-1 & 2, from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC).

On July 2015, a Uruguay subsidiary of Satellogic, URUGUS SA and CGWIC signed the piggyback launch services agreement. NewSat-1 & 2 will be the first satellites to form Satellogic’s low-cost remote sensing satellites constellation. After its establishment, the constellation is expect to provide 1m resolution images with return time in several minutes, and to provide applications such as agriculture, oil pipe and key instrument monitoring, disaster response, illegal logging monitoring, border inspection, port safety, and commercial analysis and etc.

The LM-4B Launch Vehicle for this flight is designed & manufactured by Shanghai Academy of Space Technology (SAST), which is a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation (CASC). It is mainly for the Sun Synchronous Orbit mission. This is the second corporation between Satellogic and China aerospace industry, and China launched Satellogic’s first cubesat in 2013 by Long March 2D for its technology validation.

This launch mission is the 27th flight of LM-4B launch vehicle. It marks the 228th flight of the entire Long March family as well as its11th piggyback launch for international customers.

The Ziyuan III – 02 Satellite, the main passenger of this mission, is China's civilian high resolution 3-D mapping satellite, and will be used to provide services for country’s land survey and monitoring, nature disaster prevention, agriculture and water conservancy, ecological environment, urban planning and construction, national major projects and etc. It is designed and manufactured by China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), which is also a subsidiary of CASC.

Date:2016-06-01