spacetoday.net: China launches remote sensing satellite

Posted: Tue, Dec 9, 2014, 8:39 AM ET (1339 GMT)
Long March 4B launch of CBERS-4 (Xinhua)

A Long March rocket launched a Chinese-Brazilian remote sensing satellite on Sunday. The Long March 4B rocket lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre at 10:26 pm EST Saturday (0326 GMT, 11:26 am Beijing time Sunday) and placed the Chinese-Brazilian Earth Resource Satellite 4 (CBERS-4) satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit. The satellite is a joint project of Brazil and China to develop a series of satellites to provide earth imagery for natural resources and other applications. The launch comes a year after another Long March rocket failed to place the CBERS-3 satellite into orbit. The launch was also the 200th in the history of the Long March family of rockets, stretching back to China's first satellite launch in 1970.