The People’s Republic of China has launched its Yaogan 29 spacecraft officially described as being designed for the purposes of “experiments, land survey, crop yield assessment, and disaster monitoring.” The launch by a Long March 4C rocket took place on 26 November at 2124 GMT from the Taiyuan launch site in China. From the timing of the launch, the satellite appeared to have been placed into a dawn-dusk Sun-synchronous orbit which has led some Western space analysts to speculate that this is really a synthetic aperture radar mission used for military purposes.