Posted: Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:37 AM ET (1637 GMT)
A Chinese Long March rocket successfully launched a Turkish remote sensing satellite on Wednesday. The Long March 2D rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 11:13 am EST Tuesday (1613 GMT Tuesday, 12:13 am Beijing time Wednesday) and placed the Gokturk-2 satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. The 450-kilogram satellite, built by Turkey's Space Technologies Research Institute and Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc., with a camera system provided by South Korea, is designed to provide imagery of the Earth at resolutions as high as 2.5 meters. The launch was the 19th by China in 2012 and the last scheduled mission of the year.

Related Links:

•  NASASpaceFlight.com article
•  Spaceflight Now
•  Flight International article
•  AFP article
•  Xinhua article