At 3:12, October 15, 2022, the Long March IID carrier rocket successfully put the Remote Sensing No 36 satellite into the scheduled orbit at Xichang Satellite Launch Center, and the launch mission was a complete success. The Remote Sensing No 36 satellite launched this time was lead developed by China Academy of Space Technology and Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology respectively.

The Long March IID carrier rocket carrying out this mission is a normal temperature liquid-fuel two-stage carrier rocket lead developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology. The rocket’s takeoff thrust is about 300 tons, and its corresponding capacity for the 700 km solar synchronous circular orbit is 1.3 tons. It has the ability to launch single and multiple satellites required by different orbits at Jiuquan, Taiyuan and Xichang satellite launch centers. 

Rocket test team

Carried out six launch missions at the same base in five months

This launch is the sixth launch mission of Long March IID carrier rocket at Xichang Satellite Launch Center in 2022. Up to now, this model has been launched at Xichang Satellite Launch Center for five consecutive months this year. For this reason, test team members who had been continuously performing tasks were changed to ensure that their mentality can be effectively adjusted and relieved under the working rhythm of high-density launches, and devote themselves to the follow-up work with reenergized spirit.

In order to enable new team members to quickly get familiar with the process under the high-density launches and fast-paced work condition, master the operation essentials and guarantee this launch mission’s quality and quantity, with the team for this model’s overall planning and the responses from the overall and subsystem, general production and maintenance requirements for the Long March IID carrier rocket to launch Remote Sensing No. 36 satellite and the all-in-one operation procedure of the launch site were developed and improved.

At the same time, the team for this model made full use of the valuable information accumulated in previous missions, and established a model items management mechanism jointly with LDM system management personnel for items that are difficult to operate, easy to make mistakes, undetectable and unpredictable, that is, key items are displayed in the form of video or pictures and imported into the LDM system, so that relevant operators can preview in advance, and compare pictures and texts afterwards, ensuring the consistency of technical requirements, standardized operation process and unified operation results in one work.

This launch is the 68th launch of the Long March IID carrier rocket, the 172nd flight test of the Long March series carrier rocket lead developed by Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, and the 444th launch of the Long March series carrier rocket.

Satellite test team

Worked day and night to catch up on schedule; streamlined processes while ensuring quality

In the face of the situation that the launch process time was 10% shorter than the previous mission, the Remote Sensing No. 36 Satellite team from the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, together with other development units, overcame various difficulties such as short transition time and early launch time, maximized development efficiency, and completed a series of tasks on time with quality and efficiency, such as product acceptance, integration test, large-scale test and launch site test, ensuring the success of the mission for this model.

Faced with the tight delivery time of this model, with the strong support and full guarantee of the Third Department of Scientific Research of Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the Project Office for this model organized the AIT designers to reoptimize development process, reorganize test projects, and re-streamline launch site personnel. At the same time, the team gave up the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday and weekends, and organized three shifts for personnel to rotate in half an hour, so as to achieve "people can rest but not the satellite", and efficiently completed the whole satellite electrical test, thermal test, mechanical test, large system docking and other projects.

The Commander in Chief and the Chief Designer had been constantly devising stogies, coordinating and controlling, striving for perfection, and ensuring the implementation of various development tasks; the Deputy Designer and the General Director Designer often reside at the site, leading the team to complete various test tasks and the whole satellite test day and night to ensure that the satellite leave the factory on schedule; the dispatching and quality personnel make careful planning to ensure orderly connection of work. With strong cooperation and hard work of the team members, better process, higher efficiency, faster progress and better quality were achieved. The model was delivered on time, with guaranteed quality and in shorter time, setting a new benchmark for rapid mass production of satellites for the satellite division of Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.

Faced with the advance of launch time, the launch test team members rose to the challenge and joined seamlessly. They began working on the night arriving at the launch site, and completed unpacking, antenna deployment, whole satellite precision measurement and electrical measurement status establishment all night long. The test team organized a mobilization meeting to redeploy and rearrange the work of the launch site, encouraging all test team members to overcome negligence caused by continuous success and fatigue caused by long-term hard work in the field, and firmly establish "greater confidence in the face of greater pressure, and higher quality standards in the face of higher launch density ".

At the same time, the test team took many measures to deliver a good "combination punch" and work together to ensure successful launch. On the basis of confirming the health status of the platform products, they tested in advance and efficiently interleaved tasks, realizing multi satellite parallel wireless testing and interleaved platform testing, greatly reducing the time for electrical testing in the technical area; they worked hard, cooperated with each other efficiently, caught up schedule, sped up progress, and completed all the work in the technical area in only 5 days; they concentrated and worked hard, worked at  the electrical testing room and the assembly hall, powered up the system continuously for three days and two nights, and the testing time was more than 60 hours, and completed all the tasks of the launch site in the shortest time and at the fastest speed.

The satellite test team completed all work at the launch site in 16 days, breaking the record of the shortest duration of satellite work at the launch site for Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, and embraced the successful convening of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China with a complete success.