BEIJING: China today launched Venezuela's second remote sensing satellite, five years after helping the South American nation with its first satellite.
The VRSS-2 satellite was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi desert using a Long March 2D carrier rocket.
It is the third satellite to be jointly launched by China and Venezuela.
The satellite will primarily be used by Venezuela for the inspection of land resource, environmental protection, disaster monitoring and management, crop yield estimation and city planning, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The VRSS-2, with a designed mission life of five years, is an optical remote sensing satellite, equipped with a panchromatic/multi-spectral, high resolution camera and a short/long wave infrared camera, according to the satellite's developers at the China Academy of Space Technology.
The infrared camera, about the size of an A3-size page printer, enables the VRSS-2 to capture images day and night at the required temperature of minus 215 degrees centigrade.
The Chinese carrier rocket, designed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, took the satellite to is preset orbit. This was the 252nd flight mission for the Long March rocket family.
In 2008, China launched Venezuela's first satellite - the Venesat-1, or "Simon Bolivar" - which carried communications facilities.
In 2012, Venezuela's first remote sensing satellite, the VRSS-1, was also launched into space from China.