China conducted its 16th orbital launch of the year by orbiting the third satellite on its Environmental Protection & Disaster Monitoring Constellation. The Huanjing-1C (Environment-1C) satellite was launched at 22:53 UTC on Sunday, 18 November 2012, from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center’s LC9 Launch Platform using the Long March 2C (Chang Zheng-2C) launch vehicle.
This was the 171st successful Chinese orbital launch, the 171st launch of a Chang Zheng launch vehicle, the 41st successful orbital launch from Taiyuan and the fifth launch from Taiyuan this year.
The HJ-1 satellites are a network of Earth observing satellites owned by the National Committee for Disaster Reduction and State Environmental Protection Administration of China, with the objective to establish an operational Earth observing system for disaster monitoring and mitigation using remote sensing technology and to improve the efficiency of disaster mitigation and relief.
