China launches cloud platform to share remote-sensing achievements

A Long March-4B carrier rocket carrying a new group of remote sensing satellites blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Aug. 16, 2024. (Photo by Yang Xi/Xinhua)

BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- China launched an open cloud platform on Friday to provide the public with a series of aerospace information application services, including remote-sensing data.

The GEOVIS Cloud Open Platform is expected to support fields such as smart agriculture, environmental protection, urban planning, traffic monitoring and natural disaster warning.

It was designed to lower the threshold for users to access aerospace information services. Some common remote-sensing products for key parameters such as vegetation ecology, water resources, soil and atmosphere were also introduced on the platform.

In recent years, China has put more satellites into orbit and has achieved continuous progress in observation methods such as the high-resolution Earth observation system. Meanwhile, the country's remote-sensing data acquisition capability and the richness of available resources have also been greatly improved.

The remote-sensing satellite technology is empowering multiple industries with its unique ability to cover space and time, and to obtain high-precision information.

With the comprehensive formation of an Earth observation system composed of land, meteorological and marine satellites, China's remote-sensing satellites have reached a globally advanced level in terms of quantity and quality.

By the end of 2022, China had 294 civilian remote-sensing satellites operating in orbit, of which 189 were commercial satellites, accounting for more than 60 percent. Commercial remote-sensing satellites have become the main body of China's civilian remote-sensing satellites.