China's geological disaster monitoring has added another weapon! Land Exploration 1 Group 01 A star was successfully launched

At 7:44 a.m. on January 26, the mainland successfully launched the Land Exploration No. 1 Group 01 A satellite at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center with the Long March 4 C carrier rocket. The satellite has the characteristics of all-weather, all-weather, multi-mode and multi-polarization, which can meet the needs of basic geographic information acquisition such as land resources, earthquakes, disaster prevention and mitigation, surveying and mapping, forestry, etc., accelerate the formation of rapid response capabilities for major disasters, and provide space observation technical support for achieving global goals such as sustainable development.

The star arrows launched this time were all developed by the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. The Land Exploration No. 1 Group 01 satellite is a scientific research satellite in the "National Civil Space Infrastructure Medium and Long-term Development Plan (2015-2025)", consisting of A and B satellites, operating in a quasi-solar synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 600 kilometers. Both stars are equipped with L-band synthetic aperture radar payloads, with a variety of imaging modes, the highest resolution of 3 meters, the maximum observation width of up to 400 kilometers.

The picture shows the land exploration of the 1st group of A stars. Photo by Zhang Yang

According to the Eighth Academy of Aerospace Science and Technology Group, the characteristics of L-band radar wavelength and penetration ability in vegetation areas can provide long-wave synthetic aperture radar data with wide coverage, large density of measurement points and high repetition frequency for early identification of disaster hazards in areas with complex conditions and difficulty in ground investigation.

In addition, the double star can carry out two flight modes in orbit: follow-up flight and orbital flight. It operates on the same regression orbital plane in the follow-up mode, with a phase interval of 180 degrees, with the ability to observe the repeated orbit of a single star for 8 days and a double star for 4 days, and the differential interference synthesis aperture radar deformation measurement technology is applied by obtaining multi-scene images before and after the ground settlement change, data processing, and deformation information are extracted, effectively supporting the application needs of ground settlement, landslide, ground collapse, earthquake deformation and so on. The orbiting formation mode can realize high-precision ground elevation measurement of interferometric synthetic aperture radar through high-precision phase, time and space synchronization between stars.

The picture shows the Long March 4 C carrier rocket. Photo by Yan Pengfei

It is understood that the land exploration of the first group 01 B star is scheduled to be launched at the end of February. This launch is the 86th launch of the Long March 4 series of carrier rockets, the 152nd launch of the Long March series of carrier rockets developed by the Eighth Academy of Sciences, and the 407th launch of the Long March series of carrier rockets. (Reporters Hu Zhe and Li Heng)