China successfully launched the Yunhai-1 02 environmental monitoring satellite aboard a Long March 2D rocket earlier this morning. The launch was China’s fourth this month and the country’s nineteenth of 2019.
The Long March 2D carrying the Yunhai-1 02 satellite was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center located southwest of the Gobi Desert in China at 00:54 UTC (08:54 local time) this morning. Following the launch, Chinese news agency Xinhuanet confirmed that the environmental monitoring satellite has been placed into its designated Sun-synchronous orbit without incident.
The Yunhai-1 02 satellite was developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. It is designed primarily to perform atmospheric and marine monitoring, and disaster prevention and mitigation. The Yunhai-1 02 is the second satellite of its kind to be launched. The first, Yunhai-1 01 was launched aboard a Long March 2D in November 2016.
This morning’s launch is the nineteenth launch attempt from Chinese shores this year and the seventeenth to have been successfully carried out. The launch was also the 313th mission of the Long March family of rockets. Although traditionally seen as unlucky in Western cultures, the number 13 is seen as particularly lucky in China. This is largely due to the fact that it’s a homophone for “assured growth” in Mandarin and some other dialects like Cantonese.
