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China's Landmark Broadcast Satellite Fails
Beijing (AFP) Nov 28, 2006 A satellite, aiming to provide a television signal to every household in China, has encountered problems with its solar panels and will not function as planned, state press reported Tuesday. China's first direct broadcasting satellite, the Sinosat II, launched on October 29 from southwest China's Sichuan province, failed to deploy a solar panel and an antenna and is unable to undertake its broadcast functions, the China News Service said. The report cited a spokesman from the SINO Satellite Communications Co Ltd (SINOSAT), operator of the satellite. The company would continue its plan to launch a Sinosat III satellite sometime in the first half of 2007, the spokesman said. On November 20, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a group that monitors events in China, reported that the satellite had malfunctioned. But officials from the satellite company refused to confirm the failure when contacted by AFP at the time. The satellite was launched aboard a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang launch center and was designed to serve television and broadband multimedia systems for the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, earlier reports said. The successful operation of the satellite would have fulfilled the government's goal of providing television signals to every household in China, including the nation's most remote rural areas, they said. The satellite was developed and manufactured mainly by the China Academy of Space Technology and was designed to have a 15-year life span, the reports said.
Source: Agence France-Presse Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links SINO Satellite Communications Space Technology News - Applications and Research
Leicester-Mumbai Collaboration on Space Camera
Leicester UK (SPX) Nov 23, 2006A delegation of scientists and engineers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, is visiting the University of Leicester Space Research Centre this week (31st October - 3rd November) to finalise design elements of an X-ray camera developed at Leicester for inclusion in Astrosat, India's first national astronomy satellite. |
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