TAIYUAN, Sept. 12 -- China sent a resource satellite and two small satellites into planned orbits from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province on Thursday.

They were launched on a Long March-4B carrier rocket at 11:26 a.m. (Beijing Time).

The resource satellite, ZY-1 02D, will provide observation data for natural resources asset management, ecological monitoring, disaster prevention and control, environmental protection, urban construction, transportation and contingency management.

One of the two small satellites launched on the same rocket belongs to Beijing Normal University, and is named BNU-1, and the other belongs to a Shanghai-based private space technology company.