Brazil and China on Wednesday agreed to supply data to African nations from their joint satellite programme, Chinese state media reported. Stations in Hartebeeshoek, South Africa; Aswan, Egypt; and Maspaloms, Spain, are to process and distribute data to African states from the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite-02B (CBERS-02B), the official Xinhua news agency said. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the signing of the agreements on data sharing at a space centre in Beijing on the final leg of a three-day visit to China.
The two countries' space project envisages at least two other spacecraft of higher technology that will be put into orbit, one in 2010 (CBERS-3) and the other in 2013 (CBERS-4). The images the new satellite collects will be distributed among the Central American countries, the Caribbean, Africa and Southeast Asia, starting in 2008.
China and Brazil have successfully launched the third earth resources satellite, CBERS 2B (Zi yuan 1-02B), atop a Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in north China's Shanxi Province at 11:26 a.m. (Beijing Time) . The satellite separated from the rocket 12 minutes after lift-off, and was positioned into a sun-synchronous orbit, at a perigee of 738 kilometres and an apogee of 750 kilometres. The remote sensing satellite will collect information through high definition cameras, for use in agricultural production, environmental protection, city planning and land resources surveys. The 1,452-kilogram satellite has a designed lifespan of two years.
A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 4B rocket will launch the CBERS 2B (Zi yuan 1-02B) remote sensing satellite from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre, China, at 02:00 GMT on Sept. 19, 2007. The Satellite will be the third China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite, which both countries will share to manage earth resources. The satellite lifetime is expected to be only 2 years.
Às 23 horas de terça-feira (18), do Centro de Controle e Rastreio de Satélites do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), em São José dos Campos (SP), técnicos e convidados poderão acompanhar o lançamento do CBERS-2B pelo foguete Longa Marcha 4B a partir do Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. Read more