Chinese have long recognized the importance of return-type satellites. As early as 1965, when planning the development of Chinese satellites, retrievable satellites put China’s satellite development plan identified as a priority, and in 1975 the first successful test flight and return, becoming the Soviet Union and the United States, third Return satellite successfully launched the country. This achievement is important because: Since then, China has its own strategic reconnaissance means for China’s strategic missile target, and to monitor other countries’ military deployment and mobilization, but also to check China’s own camouflage of military targets, military the value can not be replaced.
Politically, the satellites to help China establish a great power status. Today even in Japan, Germany and other developed countries, there is no such satellites. On the other hand, satellites have great economic value. For example, the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region of China reconnaissance satellite photos taken by the processing and analysis for the area of 55,000 square kilometers of area provides a wealth of information about water resources, land use, forest resources, coastal conditions and other information to identify the Bamboo county-level units of area of arable land, waters, forests, saline-alkali soil, sand, the erosion of land area and per capita arable land area, and other figures, the cost is very low. Reconnaissance of disaster prevention and resilience is even more difficult to match by other means.
For example, in the Chinese military reconnaissance satellite photos, you can clearly identify a number of geological disasters in the lots, which are no longer important in these lots on the construction of the facility to avoid major economic losses. So far, China has successfully developed three types of reconnaissance satellites, successfully launched 17 satellites, of which only launched in 1993 as planned return of a no. Chinese retrievable reconnaissance satellites breakthrough Chinese new-type, heavy more than 3000 kilograms, which recycled some of the payload weight and volume increased by 53% and 15%, the capsule volume increased by 20.3%. From 1992 to 1996, China has been successfully launched and recovered the three. (more…)