Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
Editor's note: This article is several days late as my spare time has been devoted to something else lately. 
Fall and winter marks the busiest times for Chinese aerospace workers - and this season is no exception as another Chinese satellite reaches space for the 3rd time in September. Luckily for us reporters, the mysterious passenger is yet another member of an old friend of the Chinese satellite armada.
On September 28 at 05:13 UTC, yet another Long March 2C rocket lifted off from the second pad of LC-4 at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (the pad was used for the second time in a month), and at about a dozen minutes later deployed the 7th satellite of the SJ-11 constellation into polar orbit. The launch time indicates that this satellite #7 may possibly replace satellite #3, which was launched in July 2011 and possibly already reached the end of its nominal lifetime.
The mission of SJ-11 is still very unclear, though available public info shows that it may be used in a general surveillance role, not unlike many reconnaissance birds in space. The constellation will be completed with the launch of SJ-11-08 around mid-October.
Several launches are still in the queue from China over the next 3 months, but the main attention will fall to the "Chang'e 5 precursor mission", where a spacecraft would be launched on a lunar free-return fly-by trajectory that would deploy a prototype deep space return capsule before re-entry to test out the real one to be used on the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission, now scheduled to fly in 2017/8. Remember, this return capsule should be flying into the atmosphere faster than both Orion EFT-1 and ESA's IXV, flying in the next 3 months! The mission should not be too far from now, as reports are coming in that liftoff is scheduled around October 23 with re-entry planned around October 31! Stay tuned in this part of the forum for more details.... :tiphat:
NASASpaceflight.com: China launches another secretive Shijian-11 mission
Fall and winter marks the busiest times for Chinese aerospace workers - and this season is no exception as another Chinese satellite reaches space for the 3rd time in September. Luckily for us reporters, the mysterious passenger is yet another member of an old friend of the Chinese satellite armada.
On September 28 at 05:13 UTC, yet another Long March 2C rocket lifted off from the second pad of LC-4 at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (the pad was used for the second time in a month), and at about a dozen minutes later deployed the 7th satellite of the SJ-11 constellation into polar orbit. The launch time indicates that this satellite #7 may possibly replace satellite #3, which was launched in July 2011 and possibly already reached the end of its nominal lifetime.
The mission of SJ-11 is still very unclear, though available public info shows that it may be used in a general surveillance role, not unlike many reconnaissance birds in space. The constellation will be completed with the launch of SJ-11-08 around mid-October.
Several launches are still in the queue from China over the next 3 months, but the main attention will fall to the "Chang'e 5 precursor mission", where a spacecraft would be launched on a lunar free-return fly-by trajectory that would deploy a prototype deep space return capsule before re-entry to test out the real one to be used on the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return mission, now scheduled to fly in 2017/8. Remember, this return capsule should be flying into the atmosphere faster than both Orion EFT-1 and ESA's IXV, flying in the next 3 months! The mission should not be too far from now, as reports are coming in that liftoff is scheduled around October 23 with re-entry planned around October 31! Stay tuned in this part of the forum for more details.... :tiphat:
NASASpaceflight.com: China launches another secretive Shijian-11 mission
