China Smart Dragon-3 Launches 2 Hyperspectral Satellites by Sea for Asian Countries
China successfully sent two new hyperspectral satellites to space on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, for Indonesia and Uzbekistan. The satellites, Oriental Smart Eye 01 and Oriental Smart Eye 02, were launched at 10:38 Beijing Time (0238 GMT) atop a Smart Dragon-3 (SD-3) carrier rocket from waters off the coast of Haiyang, a city in east China's Shandong province. The satellites entered their planned sun-synchronous orbits.
These satellites are part of China's "Oriental Smart Eye Constellation" project. It aims to deploy more than 200 high-resolution intelligent satellites by 2030, comprising over 100 optical satellites, over 100 radar satellites, and four hyperspectral satellites.
The customers were Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency and Uzbekistan's space research agency, Uzcosmos. They purchased hyperspectral remote sensing spacecraft from commercial satellite maker STAR.VISION Aerospace.
The offshore launch mission was conducted by the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. Today’s launch was the 12th mission for the Jielong-3 launch vehicle. This was also the 55th launch from China in 2026.
The SD-3 is part of China's Dragon rocket family. It was developed to launch small, commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and satellite networks. It is capable of sending a payload of 1.5 tonnes into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of 500 kilometers.
Indonesia’s satellite is dubbed Lampung-1 and is mainly tasked with supporting the nation’s growth of its marine economy, monitoring environmental changes in support of eco-governance, and providing insights into agricultural challenges.
Known as Samarqand-2028, Uzbekistan plans to use its spacecraft for supporting the agricultural sector, ecological monitoring efforts across the nation and Central Asia.
The Indonesian and Uzbek spacecraft are twins, weighing 300 kilograms. Both can collect images at a resolution of 5 meters in a 300-kilometer-wide swath while revisiting locations every five days. Supporting that, they are equipped with local artificial intelligence systems to pre-process collected data, kept within 10 terabytes of onboard storage.
Release Date: Aug. 5, 2026
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