Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center is a launch center for scientific, technical and experimental satellites. Founded in 1958, the facility covers about 2,800 square kilometers. The terrain there being primarily flat and dry, it’s an ideal place for launching spacecraft. About 300 days out of every year are suitable for launches.

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center has turned the desert zone, in which it is located, into an eco-friendly city, where flowers, grass and other plants thrive in late autumn. More than 60 oases have emerged, and flourishing vegetation has been appearing in the extremely arid desert, where the annual rainfall is 40 millimeters while the annual evaporation is over 3,600 millimeters.

At a mean elevation of 1,000 meters, the Jiuquan launch center is mainly used to send experimental and applications satellites that are on the lower and medium orbits with large orbital inclination angles. Meanwhile, it is also capable of testing medium- and long-range missiles.

Over the past four decades and more, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center has made nine successful history-making launches, including the testing of China's first short-range missile, the launch of China's first man-made satellite, the testing of a long-range launch vehicle to the Pacific Ocean, as well as a 1981 launch that sent three satellites into the orbit atop a single rocket.

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