Successfully launched! All members of Gaofen-3 have assembled!

The reporter learned from the National Space Administration that at 7:47 on April 7, my country successfully launched the Gaofen-3 No. 03 satellite using the Long March 4B Yao 38 carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

GF-3 03 is an operational satellite listed in the Medium- and Long-Term Development Plan for National Civilian Space Infrastructure (2015-2025). The satellite's technical status is consistent with that of GF-3 02. After being launched into orbit, it will be networked with GF-3 01 and GF-3 02 in orbit. The three satellites will work together to weave a "Sky Eye Network" in space, achieving a resolution of 1 meter and 1-day revisit, which will greatly enhance my country's radar satellite sea and land observation capabilities.

Samsung Networking Achieves 1+1+1＞3

"The biggest feature of networking operation is to give full play to the advantages of multi-satellite collaborative observation and form an application efficiency of 1+1+1>3." Researchers from the Fifth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (hereinafter referred to as the "Fifth Academy") introduced. With the support of three stars, the powerful advantages of the space "Sky Eye Network" are particularly prominent. In fact, when designing the orbit of Gaofen-3 01, the development team has focused on the revisit and coverage needs of my country's land and jurisdictional waters. In order to maximize the application efficiency of satellites, the development team chose to evenly distribute the Gaofen-3 series of satellites on the same orbital plane, and the time for three satellites to orbit the earth is 99 minutes. "This design will increase the number of satellite observations, improve revisit capabilities and global coverage capabilities, and further enhance the satellite's support for marine information services and disaster response capabilities." Researchers from the Fifth Academy said.

▲The Gaofen-3 satellite 03 is transferred to the launch tower

Zhang Qingjun, commander-in-chief and chief designer of the Gaofen-3 satellite series, told reporters that "it takes up to 3.5 days for Gaofen-3 01 to achieve repeated observations of a certain area, which cannot meet the current huge application needs, especially the requirements of high timeliness in emergency disaster reduction." Today, the networking operation has compressed the average revisit time from 0.6 days per satellite to 0.2 days for three satellites, and the average revisit period from 15 hours per satellite to 5 hours, and can image a certain area 5 times a day.

In 2016, once launched, GF-3 01 set a record of nearly one hour of single continuous imaging for high-power remote sensing satellites. After GF-3 01 was put into operation, the research and development team learned that the monitoring area of ​​ocean observation urgently needed to be expanded, and doubled the single continuous imaging time of the global observation mode of 02 and 03 continuous ocean detection, breaking the world record again. Moreover, the three-star network can achieve a single imaging to capture nearly one-fifth of the world's oceans, making it easier to take a "family portrait" of the earth.

In addition, the GF-3 satellites can quickly form an effective interferometric baseline through the three-star formation flight and carry out the business operation of ground deformation interferometric measurement. Zhang Qingjun said that this function can be widely used in surface subsidence monitoring, earthquake monitoring, glacier movement monitoring, road and railway deformation monitoring and landslide monitoring.

"Space Almighty Detective" enters business application

The Gaofen-3 series satellites are powerful and have superior performance, and can meet the application needs in the fields of marine disaster prevention and reduction, marine dynamic environment monitoring and disaster reduction, land, environmental protection, water conservancy, agriculture and meteorology. Therefore, they are called "all-round space detectives."

▲Schematic diagram of the three Gaofen-3 satellites in the same orbit

As a radar imaging satellite, the GF-3 series satellites have received close attention from all parties since the project was launched. Considering the urgent application needs of users, the researchers of the Fifth Academy "tailored" 12 imaging modes for GF-3, and expanded more than 10 test modes for specific applications in the subsequent operation process. GF-3 01 has become the synthetic aperture radar satellite with the most imaging modes in the world. At the same time, GF-3 01 has a resolution of up to 1 meter, which is the world's highest resolution C-band, multi-polarization satellite. Combined with the advantage of a maximum width of 650 kilometers, it can achieve large-scale surveys and detailed surveys of specific areas, meeting the imaging needs of different users for different targets.

According to statistics, as of March 2022, GF-3-01 has achieved a global effective coverage area of ​​348.2 million square kilometers, achieving global and national one map drawing. At present, GF-3-01 has launched emergency observation services more than 900 times for 225 emergency events, and distributed more than 2,000 scenes of data in emergency events such as Zhengzhou rainstorms, Sri Lanka floods, and Brazilian forest fires.

Researchers from the Fifth Academy said that after the three-star network is formed, the overall imaging capability of the GF-3 series of satellites will be greatly enhanced, marking that my country's civilian high-resolution SAR satellite data has officially entered the commercial application stage from the demonstration application stage.

(Source: “Science and Technology Daily” WeChat official account)

Produced by: Science Central Kitchen

Produced by: Beijing Science and Technology News | Beijing Science and Technology Media

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