At 00:07 on December 27, 2025, the Fengyun-4C satellite was launched by a Long March-3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The satellite accurately entered its preset orbit, marking the full success of the mission. The Fengyun-4C satellite, developed under the lead of SAST, is the third satellite in the Fengyun-4 series. It is primarily used for nowcasting of weather conditions including typhoons and rainstorms, as well as for space weather forecasting.

The Most Powerful Geostationary Meteorological Satellite with Comprehensive Observation Capability

The Fengyun-4C satellite launched this time adopts a new high-performance electric propulsion remote sensing satellite platform. It is equipped with four different types of Earth-observation remote sensing instruments and two solar observation instruments. It integrates comprehensive detection capabilities including multi-channel two-dimensional imaging, three-dimensional atmospheric sounding, high-frame-rate lightning imaging, ionospheric imaging, and solar imaging and flux measurement. It also supports inter-satellite coordination, high-speed satellite-to-ground data transmission, and data broadcast relay functions. It features a highly stable observation system, high precision of remote sensing products, and high timeliness in reception, processing, and distribution. The main technical specifications of Fengyun-4C have been improved by 2 to 3 times compared to those of Fengyun-4B, making it the geostationary meteorological satellite with the most powerful comprehensive observation capability in the world.

In terms of platform upgrades, the newly designed Vector Adjustment Mechanism + Low-thrust Hall Thruster on the Fengyun-4C satellite operates like two flexible arms gently wielding a feather fan. With subtle and precise adjustments, it smoothly reduces the satellite's operational space from the scale of a football field to the confined area of a penalty box, all without reducing the payloads. This enables high-precision autonomous in-orbit station-keeping and momentum unloading, achieving an accuracy improvement of over 10 times.

Among the four Earth-observation instruments, the Advanced Geostationary Radiation Imager has reduced its time for full-disk imaging from 15 minutes to 5 minutes, enabling it to detect atmospheric temperature changes as fine as 0.02°C from tens of thousands of kilometers away. The Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder, currently the only operational atmospheric sounding instrument of its kind in the world, has improved its spatial resolution from 12 km to 8 km and can complete temperature and humidity sounding over China within one hour. The Lightning Mapping Imager is capable of capturing 500 frames per second and can identify lightning events from a data stream of 30 Gbps—equivalent to playing back 30 high-definition movies in one second and pinpointing every "traffic light" (lightning flash) within them, truly embodying the name "Keen-sighted Eyes." The Multi-band Ultraviolet Ionospheric Imager has, for the first time in China, achieved hyperspectral ionospheric detection in the extreme ultraviolet band. The two solar observation instruments fill the gap in China's geostationary orbit solar monitoring and forecasting capabilities.

Building a More Efficient and Coordinated Three-Dimensional Observation Network

With the successful launch of Fengyun-4C, China has now launched 23 Fengyun series of meteorological satellites. Geostationary meteorological satellites, serving as outposts for the first line of defense in meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation, are globally recognized as complex and advanced aerospace systems. On December 11, 2016, China's new-generation geostationary meteorological satellite, Fengyun-4A, was launched with a success. Through its system design featuring multiple payloads on a common platform, it established a powerful comprehensive Earth meteorological observation capability, leading the world in three-dimensional atmospheric sounding from geostationary orbit. On June 3, 2021, the launch of Fengyun-4B initiated China's operational mode of dual-satellite operation with east-west positioning for the new-generation geostationary satellites.

Fengyun-4C achieves a further generational upgrade in observation capability, detection parameters, data transmission, and inter-satellite coordination, keeping abreast with international levels. Its newly added inter-satellite collaborative observation capability will, in the future, weave a spatial "data highway network," promoting the creation of an innovative paradigm for the international meteorological observation system and advancing toward the efficiency goal of "observation upon discovery, service upon observation." After being launched into orbit, Fengyun-4C will form a more efficient and coordinated observation network together with its predecessor satellites. This will significantly enhance China's comprehensive capabilities in weather forecasting, meteorological disaster prevention and mitigation, space weather monitoring and warning, as well as ecological environment monitoring and disaster response. It marks the full entry of China’s geostationary meteorological observation into operational service.

Looking ahead, China will launch additional geostationary and low-Earth orbit meteorological satellites to establish a space-based meteorological collaborative observation framework, promote the integrated application of satellite remote sensing in meteorology, and provide technological support for the high-quality development of meteorological services.