China launched a new Earth-observation satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China on Thursday.

The satellite, Gaofen-3 03, was launched by a Long March-4C rocket at 7:47 a.m. (Beijing Time) and entered the planned orbit successfully. 

Together with two previously launched Gaofen-3 series satellites, the three will work in a network and create a "sky eye" in space.

A network for better coverage 

Evenly distributed on the same orbital plane, the three satellites are designed to work together in order to increase efficiency, circulating the Earth every 99 minutes.

The design will increase the number of times satellites observe the Earth, improve their revisiting capabilities and extend global coverage, and thus enhance their performance in operational application data support for China's marine development, terrestrial environmental resource monitoring and emergency disaster prevention and mitigation.

Compared with the first satellite of its kind, launched in 2016, the Gaofen-3 02 and 03 are equipped with an auto-identification system (AIS) and are enhanced with other features.

It took 3.5 days for the original satellite to revisit the same area, but that time interval has been cut to five hours with the satellite network. 

The three satellites are capable of capturing stable high-resolution synthetic-aperture radar images of the same area five times each day. 

The launch marks the 414th mission for the Long March series carrier rockets.