Posted: Fri, Jun 1, 2007, 12:55 PM ET (1655 GMT)
China launched a communications satellite early Friday that is designed to be a partial replacement for one that failed shortly after launch last year. A Long March 3A rocket lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 12:08 pm EDT Thursday (1608 GMT Thursday, 12:08 am local time Friday) and placed the SinoSat-3 communications satellite into a geosychronous transfer orbit 24 minutes later. The satellite, built by the China Academy of Space Technology, will operate at 125 degrees east in GEO. The launch comes a little more than six months after SinoSat-2 was launched; that spacecraft failed to deploy its solar panels and was eventually declared a total loss. While SinoSat-3 may provide some of the same capabilities originally planned for SinoSat-2, a replacement satellite will be built and launched by the end of the decade. This launch was the 100th for the Long March family of vehicles, dating back to the first Chinese orbital launch in 1970.
