Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
A mad-hatter with a large wire mesh hat, a rectangular robot with a single wing and a pair of hummingbirds went into a bar in downtown Beijing, got too drunk and were kidnapped by the Chinese. They were then stuck on a high-tech warehouse for several years, being worked on by a team of Chinese specialists. Then two months ago they were stuck onto a plane, then got transferred into a tight tub. When they all woke up earlier today, they found themselves floating in space with the Earth beneath their feet!
....... or so I heard about the story four weirdos that got sent into Earth orbit half a day ago. :rofl:
Weirdos indeed, for the 3 or 4 satellites (depending on how you count them) launched by the Chinese are each quite interesting on their own! They were launched on top of a Long March 2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, located right inside the rolling hills of northern China, at 22:53 UTC yesterday (6:53 am LT), just as the first hints of dawn approaches the launch site's eastern horizon. Within 15 minutes, the rocket delivered the Huan Jing 1C (Environment-1C) radar satellite and 3 other payloads into a 500 km high sun-synchronous orbit along the terminator.
HJ-1C is China's first ever synthetic aperture radar satellite in civilian service. Part of the three satellite Environmental Protection & Disaster Monitoring Constellation (the other two, HJ-1A/B, were launched a long time ago in Sept. 2008), it carries an S-band mesh radar that can provide all-weather images of the ground with a resolution of down to 20 meters. The 850 kg satellite provides the Chinese civil authorities and other countries with an alternative method of collecting environmental and disaster monitoring data. It is also China's first spacecraft with a deploy-able large antenna.
Launched along with it are two more satellites - or actually 3, because one of them has two separable parts! Named after the hummingbird, HummerSat-1 is a 200 kg satellite that consists of the 160 kg HS-1 and the detachable 30 kg class HS-1A. Making use of autonomous software, cross-link antennas and a laser beam system, the two mini-satellites will attempt to do different variations of formation flying and test out various systems that supports it. Currently the two has yet to separate from each other.
Rounding out the group is the strangely shaped XY-1 (a.k.a. New Technology Demonstration satellite 1). Being the first privately funded Chinese spacecraft for technology demonstration purposes, it will test out various spacecraft components and systems developed in-house.
This launch marks the start of a tight period of less than two weeks (perhaps even shorter!) where three Chinese rockets are waiting for their chances to take to the skies. A French-built communication satellite is waiting for launch from Xichang on this Thursday, while over the Gobi desert another launch with a trio of spysats are also aiming for launch later this week. Look out for my future posts for the latest news about them!
NASASpaceflight.com: Chinese Long March 2C lofts Huanjing-1C into orbit
Photos:
Videos:
Information sources:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30016.0
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/h/hj-1
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/h/hummersat-1
http://www.9ifly.net/thread-61-1-1.html (in Chinese)
http://www.9ifly.net/thread-10495-1-1.html (in Chinese)
....... or so I heard about the story four weirdos that got sent into Earth orbit half a day ago. :rofl:
Weirdos indeed, for the 3 or 4 satellites (depending on how you count them) launched by the Chinese are each quite interesting on their own! They were launched on top of a Long March 2C rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, located right inside the rolling hills of northern China, at 22:53 UTC yesterday (6:53 am LT), just as the first hints of dawn approaches the launch site's eastern horizon. Within 15 minutes, the rocket delivered the Huan Jing 1C (Environment-1C) radar satellite and 3 other payloads into a 500 km high sun-synchronous orbit along the terminator.
HJ-1C is China's first ever synthetic aperture radar satellite in civilian service. Part of the three satellite Environmental Protection & Disaster Monitoring Constellation (the other two, HJ-1A/B, were launched a long time ago in Sept. 2008), it carries an S-band mesh radar that can provide all-weather images of the ground with a resolution of down to 20 meters. The 850 kg satellite provides the Chinese civil authorities and other countries with an alternative method of collecting environmental and disaster monitoring data. It is also China's first spacecraft with a deploy-able large antenna.
Launched along with it are two more satellites - or actually 3, because one of them has two separable parts! Named after the hummingbird, HummerSat-1 is a 200 kg satellite that consists of the 160 kg HS-1 and the detachable 30 kg class HS-1A. Making use of autonomous software, cross-link antennas and a laser beam system, the two mini-satellites will attempt to do different variations of formation flying and test out various systems that supports it. Currently the two has yet to separate from each other.
Rounding out the group is the strangely shaped XY-1 (a.k.a. New Technology Demonstration satellite 1). Being the first privately funded Chinese spacecraft for technology demonstration purposes, it will test out various spacecraft components and systems developed in-house.
This launch marks the start of a tight period of less than two weeks (perhaps even shorter!) where three Chinese rockets are waiting for their chances to take to the skies. A French-built communication satellite is waiting for launch from Xichang on this Thursday, while over the Gobi desert another launch with a trio of spysats are also aiming for launch later this week. Look out for my future posts for the latest news about them!
NASASpaceflight.com: Chinese Long March 2C lofts Huanjing-1C into orbit
Photos:
Videos:
Information sources:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=30016.0
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/h/hj-1
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/h/hummersat-1
http://www.9ifly.net/thread-61-1-1.html (in Chinese)
http://www.9ifly.net/thread-10495-1-1.html (in Chinese)
AFAIK 
