China-Brazil in space

TAIYUAN, Shanxi, China (Xinhua) — A new satellite, jointly developed by China and Brazil, was sent into space on Friday, pushing forward the aerospace cooperation between the two countries, according to the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

The China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A (CBERS-4A) was launched on a Long March-4B carrier rocket at 11:22 a.m. Friday Beijing Time from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China’s Shanxi Province.

The satellite is the sixth satellite under the earth resource satellite cooperation program between the two countries. It will obtain global optical remote-sensing data and support the Brazilian government’s monitoring of the Amazon rainforest and the country’s environmental changes.

The CBERS-4A will replace CBERS-4, which was launched in 2014, to improve the resolution of the remote-sensing data, CNSA said.

It is equipped with three optical payloads: a wide-range panchromatic multispectral camera developed by China, and a multispectral camera and a wide-field imager developed by Brazil.