China sends new marine satellite, mini space station

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China sent a new marine satellite into orbit Thursday morning.

A Long March-4B rocket carrying the HY-2B satellite took off at 6:57 a.m. from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.

The HY-2B is an ocean dynamic satellite, which will form a network with the subsequent HY-2C and HY-2D for maritime environmental monitoring.

Thursday's launch was the 288th by the Long March rocket series.

Mini space station for the coming global shopping feast

Onboard the same rocket is a mini space station from Alibaba dubbed "Candy Jar."

A mini space station is an artificial satellite but not habitable for astronauts.

The 20-kilogram "Candy Jar" was transferred from Shanghai couple of days ago by engineers and successfully sent to the preset orbit on Thursday.

The mini space station will provide more forms of interaction for global consumers. /VCG Photo

This year marks the 11th anniversary of the Double-11 global shopping festival which originated from China to celebrate for the singles.

The name of the space station is closely related to the theme of this year's shopping festival, "happiness." Candy is the purest pleasure in our childhood, and a candy jar is the container of happiness, as Alibaba explained. With this mini space station, the celebration of this year has new forms of interaction.

When the mini space station passes overhead, consumers from AliExpress, an e-commerce platform under Alibaba targeted at overseas consumers, will get messages from the AliExpress mobile App where they can take selfies "from the space." They may also be showered by the "red envelope rain" to get discounts and even have all their goods in the carts paid.

International consumers can send their stories to AliExpress, and 10 of the stories will be selected and sent to space with a satellite early next year. For Chinese netizens, those who share their happy moments in the past 10 years at Weibo and tag the Candy Jar space station may have the chance to have their messages collected in the "space museum."

"The jar, lift off in China, will provide interactive games to countries and regions. We hope it can bring more happiness to the world," said Wang Mingqiang, general manager of AliExpress.

According to Science and Technology Daily, the mini space station also has the capabilities of space imaging and remote sensing, which means it could be further used in fields of digital cities, smart cities, urban governance and vegetation monitoring.

(With inputs from Xinhua News Agency)