China has launched the Gaofen 2 Earth observation spacecraft aboard a Long March 4B launch vehicle flying from the Taiyuan launch site at 0315 GMT on 19 August 2014. The 780kg spacecraft which is reported to have an imaging resolution of 0.8m Panchromatic and 3.2m in multispectral formats was built by CAST – Chinese Academy of Space Technology for CASIC – China Aerospace and Industry Corp. The spacecraft uses the CAST 3000 bus design. Also on the flight was the 6kg Brite-PL 2, also known as Heweliusz. This is a Polish astronomical spacecraft built with the University of Toronto and will use astroseismology techniques on bright stars.
