{"id":519904,"date":"2026-01-16T08:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519904\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T08:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T08:13:11","slug":"could-chinas-yaogan-47-satellite-have-a-lens-as-wide-as-the-hubble-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/519904\/","title":{"rendered":"Could China\u2019s Yaogan-47 satellite have a lens as wide as the Hubble Telescope?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of China\u2019s latest Earth observation satellites<\/a> operating in low orbit could feature an optical aperture at a two-metre scale with \u201cglobal leading\u201d remote sensing capabilities, according to a China Science Daily report on Thursday last week.<\/p>\n

The report refers to the Yaogan-47 satellite, which was launched aboard a Long March 4B carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on December 9.<\/p>\n

For comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope and likely the US KH-11 spy satellite have main mirrors with a 2.4-metre aperture.<\/p>\n

The Long March 4B rocket used for this launch had a low Earth orbit payload capacity of around four tonnes. In comparison, the similar-aperture Hubble telescope weighs about 11 tonnes and a KH-11 satellite weighs up to 17 tonnes.<\/p>\n

This suggests that Yaogan-47 may not carry a similarly massive telescope<\/a> or could instead employ a lightweight design.<\/p>\n

The Post cannot independently verify whether the reported two-metre optical aperture component is actually on board the Yaogan-47.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of China\u2019s latest Earth observation satellites operating in low orbit could feature an optical aperture at a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":519905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[137940,231566,9191,231561,117,231554,231553,20907,231563,2219,170,178824,231557,231567,231568,231565,159,231555,783,67,132,68,231558,231562,231560,231564,231556,231559],"class_list":["post-519904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-cas","tag-china-science-daily","tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","tag-enmap","tag-germany","tag-gf-5-satellite","tag-hisui","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-ieee-transactions-on-geoscience-and-remote-sensing","tag-italy","tag-japan","tag-jiuquan-satellite-launch-centre","tag-kh-11-spy-satellite","tag-landsat-9","tag-long-march-4b","tag-prisma","tag-science","tag-shanghai-institute-of-technical-physics","tag-space","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wang-yueming","tag-worldview-4","tag-xiopm","tag-yaogan-47","tag-zhang-geng","tag-zhuhai-1-03-satellite"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}