Yaogan

Yaogan (simplified Chinese: 遥感卫星; traditional Chinese: 遙感衞星; pinyin: Yáogǎn Wèixīng; lit. 'Remote Sensing Satellite') is the designation used by the People's Republic of China to refer to its military reconnaissance satellites. Yaogan satellites are largely known to primarily support the People's Liberation Army's Strategic Support Force (PLASSF), formerly the Aerospace Reconnaissance Bureau of the Second Department of the General Staff. The Yaogan program is the successor to the Fanhui Shi Weixing (FSW) recoverable reconnaissance satellite program but, unlike its predecessor, includes a variety of classes utilizing various means of remote sensing such as optical reconnaissance, synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), and electronic intelligence (ELINT) for maritime surveillance. Yaogan satellites have been launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (TSLC) in Shanxi province, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) in Inner Mongolia, Xichang Satellite Launch Center (XSLC) in Sichuan province and the Wenchang Space Launch Site (WSLS) in Hainan province.

Although individual Yaogan satellites are often referred to by their number (e.g. Yaogan-18), Chinese military reconnaissance satellites are typically categorized by their military Jianbing designation. Jianbing (尖兵) translates to "point soldier", "vanguard", or "pioneer" and entered use in satellite designations with China's first series of reconnaissance satellites, FSW-0, as the Jianbing-1 series. The first Yaogan satellite, Yaogan 1, is one of three Jianbing-5 (JB-5) series satellites following the final FSW-3 satellites of the Jianbing-4 (JB-4) series. Because Jianbing designations are secret and only Yaogan numbers are officially used, the Jianbing designations for later classes still remains unknown to the public.