Posted: Wed, May 15, 2002, 9:06 AM ET (1306 GMT)
A Chinese Long March booster launched a weather satellite and marine surveying spacecraft Wednesday. The Long March 4B booster lifted off from the Taiyuan launch center in northern China at 9:50 pm EDT Tuesday (0150 GMT, 9:50 am local time Wednesday). It placed into Sun-synchronous orbits the Feng Yun 1D (FY-1D) meteorological satellite and the Haiyang-1 marine surveying satellite. FY-1D is the first of five weather satellites China plans to launch before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The launch was not widely announced prior to an article published Tuesday by the English-language newspaper China Daily. The launch is the second of the year for China, after a Long March 2F booster launched the Shenzhou 3 spacecraft in late March.

Related Links:

•  Xinhua article
•  AFP article
•  FY-1 information from astronautix.com