China successfully launched 2 satellites by a Long March 4C

[shi12jun]

Liftoff at 03:11 UTC, a Long March 4C successfully launched 2 satellites: Ziyuan-1-02E and Xiwang-3 on from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. This is the 53th orbital launch from China in 2021

 

[Dungeness]

Not sure if they are in some kind of race, but the numbers are awfully close. Where is the other "Superpower"? ............................. Never mind!

 

[Shotgunner51]

Not sure if they are in some kind of race

Nah it's not some kind of race. There are loads of space launch assignments by CAST/CASC, PLASSF, some SOE telcos and even private companies to build their constellations, still a lot of orders pending for deliveries. Two more space launches scheduled in the coming few days.

On topic, the primary payload is Ziyuan-1 02E, it's the 9th sat in the Ziyuan-1 constellation owned by Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources. Compared to the previous launched 02D, 02E added a new long wave IR camera to the existing visual-NIR camera suite (2.5 m pan-chormatic/10 m multispectral res) & the 166 band hyper-spectral camera.

The ride-sharing sat is CAS-9, functions include UHF CW telemetry beacon, GMSK telemetry data transmission, V/U mode linear transponder, a visible light band space camera and an experimental thermoelectric generator. It's educational for use by high school students, user manual is here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1475073739620593667