Air pollution has taken a monstrous shape across the globe and along with other countries, China has taken a step to finding a solution to this problem. The country today launched a carbon dioxide monitoring satellite called TanSat, which will help understand climatic changes on Earth.
The satellite was launched from China’s Gobi Desert by Long March-2D rocket of Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre. The satellite weighing 620 kgs will move around 700 km above Earth in the sun-synchronous orbit. China is the third country after Japan and US who has sent its own greenhouse gasses monitoring satellite into space.
Yin Zengshan, chief designer of TanSat at Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) micro-satellite research institute said, “The satellite will monitor the concentration, distribution and flow of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.” Along with understanding climate change, this will help in formulating China’s environment policy with the data fetched from the TanSan satellite. As per reports, the newly launched satellite will provide data accurate to at least 4 ppm (parts per million).
Along with launching TanSat, the Long March-2D rocket also carried three other satellites – one high-resolution micro-nano satellite, and the other two were spectrum micro-nano satellites for agricultural and forestry monitoring purposes.
A month back, China, India, and several other countries signed the Paris agreement on climate change wherein the countries pledged to do their bit in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Now with China having their own satellite, it can figure out if the agreement is being followed by countries and the pollution level is in check.
