New eyeball in space peers toward Earth

新媒体管家

Many Chinese people use WeChat to communicate everyday, but did you notice that yesterday this most popular instant messaging application in China replaced its composite logon picture?

The former one — an image of Earth taken in 1972 by the crew of NASA's Apollo 17 spacecraft — will be replaced by an image recently taken by the Fengyun 4A satellite until Thursday.

Fengyun 4A satellite, China's most advanced weather satellite, officially began operating 36,000 kilometers above the earth on Monday, greatly improving the country's capabilities in weather forecasting, environmental monitoring and disaster prevention and relief. It is also expected to help China's response to climate change.

The 5.4-metric-ton Fengyun 4A, developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, lifted off on Dec 11 atop a Long March 3B carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.

During its shakedown period, the satellite performed well and generated good-quality images and data, according to a news release from the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, which oversees the satellite project.