Report: China, Brazil launching second satellite

CNN
March 5, 2002

Report: China, Brazil launching second satellite

                 BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- China and Brazil will send their second jointly
                 developed satellite into orbit later this year to collect data about urban and
                 rural environments, the official China Daily newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The CBERS-02 satellite, called an "Earth resource satellite," was made in Brazil and
had been transported to the China, it said.

From space it would monitor agriculture, natural disasters, forest and grassland and
urban development, it said.

But U.S. military officials say Sino-Brazilian satellites are dual-use facilities, meaning
they can perform military functions as well as civilian ones.

                 The newspaper quoted Brazilian Ambassador Affonso Celso de Ouro-Preto as
                 saying the satellites allowed Brazil to curb its dependence on foreign governments
                 for Earth data, and the two governments planned to develop two more satellites.

                 It did not say where the spacecraft would be launched, although it said China had
                 launched its predecessor, CBERS-01, from the Taiyuan centre in North China's
                 Shanxi province in 1999.

The CBERS-01 has provided 230,000 data pictures in its two years in orbit and its
data covers 96 percent of China's territory, the newspaper said.