At 0320 GMT on 27 April China launched a Long March 6 (CZ-6) rocket carry several small satellites into sun-synchronous LEO. The majority of the payloads on-board were Earth-observation in nature and came from different Chinese companies with varying degrees of commerciality.
The primary payloads were two “Qilu” satellites (Qilu-1 and Qilu-4) a SAR remote sensing unit and a high-resolution optical satellite respectively. They will be used to provide satellite-based services for Shandong Province, Eastern China. Also on-board the mission were seven other payloads. “Foshan 1”, “Zhongan Guotong-1” “Taijing II-1” and “Golden Bauhinia 1-01 and -02” are all Earth observation missions. Additional passengers were: “NEO-1” reportedly a space-mining technology demonstrator and “Tianqi-9” part of the IoT Apocalypse constellation.
