BeiDou Navigation Satellite System patch.
February 13, 2018
Long March 3B launch BeiDou-3 MEO-3 & MEO-4
China sent two satellites into orbit on a single carrier rocket for its domestic BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) on Monday. The launch took place at 05:03 UTC from the LC2 Launch Complex of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, Sichuan province. It took over four hours to complete the mission.
The twin satellites, which form a network with four previously launched BeiDou-3 satellites, were the fifth and sixth satellites in the BeiDou-3 family. They entered orbit more than three hours after the launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province.
China Launches Two Beidou-3 Navigation Satellites
The twin satellites were launched by the LM-3B YZ-1 rocket. The launch was the 267th mission for the Long March rocket family.
The MEO satellites are the Medium Earth Orbit component of the third phase of the Chinese Beidou (Compass) satellite navigation system. The satellites are part of a fleet that will expand the system to a global navigation coverage.
BeiDou Navigation Satellite
The Beidou Phase III system includes the migration of its civil Beidou 1 or B1 signal from 1561.098 MHz to a frequency centered at 1575.42 MHz – the same as the GPS L1 and Galileo E1 civil signals – and its transformation from a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation to a multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) modulation similar to the future GPS L1C and Galileo’s E1.
For more information about China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), visit: http://english.spacechina.com/n16421/index.html
Images, Video, Text, Credits: CASC/Günter Space Page/CCTV+/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
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