China successfully launched a group of 18 satellites from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province on Tuesday.
A modified Long March-6 carrier rocket, carrying the satellite group, blasted off at 7:06 p.m. Beijing Time.
The satellites, used to deploy China’s “Spacesail Constellation,” have entered the preset orbit.
The “Spacesail Constellation” project, also known as “Thousand Sails Constellation” or “G60,” is regarded as the country’s version of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation. It aims to deploy more than 15,000 low-Earth orbit satellites by 2030 to provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband internet services.
The first batch of 18 satellites for the constellation was launched in this August.
The modified Long March-6 rocket, developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, is a new generation of non-toxic and pollution-free launch vehicle capable of delivering over 4.5-tonne payloads to a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 700 kilometers.
The launch was the 539th flight mission of the Long March carrier rocket series.