Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
(Editor's note: It took me several days to gather enough info about secretive Chinese projects, hence the timing for this one is a bit late) 
Reviving from a silent period with all activities being "under the hood", the Chinese has made yet another step closer towards making their own satellite navigation system one of the "Big 4" global systems.
4 months after the Chinese kicked off a new phase of mass satellite deployment for their own BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), they have doubled them up by sending another 2 up in one shot!
The 27th Long March 3B rocket to fly lifted off from pad 2 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on July 25 at 12:29 UTC, just after sunset at the Chinese spaceport in south-western China. Some local residents thought that they saw the rocket broke up in mid-flight.....
.....but no, what they saw was just the rocket's 4 boosters separating, illuminated by the last rays of sunshine at high altitude. :rofl: 15 minutes after launch, all the lower 3.5 stages of the LM-3B finished their jobs and separated. Then the "Chinese Fregat" YZ-1 upper stage takes over on its second flight and lit up twice, putting 2 new navigation satellites into the planned 21500 km high medium Earth orbit (slightly higher than the GPS orbits and slight lower than Galileo's) 3.5 hours after launch.
The 2 satellites, being the 18th and 19th to join the constellation and each weighting about 1 tonne each, are pre-production versions of the future backbone of more than 2 dozen MEO satellites of the system. Their signal and operation performances will be evaluated along with the other satellite launched back in March before the Chinese starts spreading these satellites into space quickly, with another 2 planned for launch in the coming months as testing continues.
Given that the Chinese seems to have finally woke up for 2015 with lots of other launches planned in the last 4 months, including 7 from Xichang alone, I would advise you to stay here for more reports about the Great Chinese Spaceflight Enigma (TM).
NASASpaceflight.com: Chinese Long March 3B launches dual Beidou mission
]Two navigation satellites launched by China
Reviving from a silent period with all activities being "under the hood", the Chinese has made yet another step closer towards making their own satellite navigation system one of the "Big 4" global systems.
4 months after the Chinese kicked off a new phase of mass satellite deployment for their own BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), they have doubled them up by sending another 2 up in one shot!
The 27th Long March 3B rocket to fly lifted off from pad 2 at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on July 25 at 12:29 UTC, just after sunset at the Chinese spaceport in south-western China. Some local residents thought that they saw the rocket broke up in mid-flight.....
.....but no, what they saw was just the rocket's 4 boosters separating, illuminated by the last rays of sunshine at high altitude. :rofl: 15 minutes after launch, all the lower 3.5 stages of the LM-3B finished their jobs and separated. Then the "Chinese Fregat" YZ-1 upper stage takes over on its second flight and lit up twice, putting 2 new navigation satellites into the planned 21500 km high medium Earth orbit (slightly higher than the GPS orbits and slight lower than Galileo's) 3.5 hours after launch.
The 2 satellites, being the 18th and 19th to join the constellation and each weighting about 1 tonne each, are pre-production versions of the future backbone of more than 2 dozen MEO satellites of the system. Their signal and operation performances will be evaluated along with the other satellite launched back in March before the Chinese starts spreading these satellites into space quickly, with another 2 planned for launch in the coming months as testing continues.
Given that the Chinese seems to have finally woke up for 2015 with lots of other launches planned in the last 4 months, including 7 from Xichang alone, I would advise you to stay here for more reports about the Great Chinese Spaceflight Enigma (TM).
NASASpaceflight.com: Chinese Long March 3B launches dual Beidou mission
]Two navigation satellites launched by China
