While wrapped in the official description of being for civilian use, at 0631 GMT on 20 October 2014, a Long March 4C put a suspected Chinese military reconnaissance satellite, Yaogan 22, into a near polar Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit from the Taiyuan launch site in China. The spacecraft is officially described as being for “remote sensing” and “disaster monitoring”. However, Western space analysts believe that, like some its Yaogan forerunners, Yaogan 22 is being used for hi-resolution optical imaging.
