CBERS-1 (China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite) – 1st Generation Satellite Series

CBERS is a cooperative program between CAST (Chinese Academy of Space Technology) of the People’s Republic of China, and INPE (Instituto de Pesquisas Espaciais) of Brazil, a government agreement of both countries for the development and operation of two satellites.

The program was signed in July 1988 to establish a complete remote sensing system (space and ground segment) to supply both countries with multispectral remotely sensed imagery. – Prior to the international cooperative program of CBERS, there existed already a Chinese program, referred to as Zi Yuan or simply ZY, meaning resource in Chinese. The satellite ZY-1 FM1 (Zi Yuan-1 Flight Model 1) of this 1^st generation program came to be known as CBERS-1.

Overall objectives: Observation and monitoring of the Earth’s resources and environment with a multi-sensor imaging payload providing different spatial resolutions.

Orbit: Sun-synchronous orbit; altitude = 778 km; inclination = 98.5º; nodal period of 100.26 min; mean local solar time on descending node at 10:30 hours; revisit period of 26 days.

Launch: The first satellite, CBERS-1, was launched Oct. 14, 1999 (along with SACI-1 as a piggyback payload) by a Chinese launch vehicle (CZ-4B series) from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center (37.5º N, 112.6º E) in China’s Northern Shanxi province.

RF communications: X-band downlink transmission of all image data in four channels, two for HRCC (8103 and 8321 MHz) at data rates of 2 x 53 Mbit/s, one for IRMSS (8216.84 MHz) at a data rate of 6.13 Mbit/s, and one for WFI data (8203.35 MHz) at a data rate of 1.1 Mbit/s. The modulation is QPSK for HRCC and WFI data streams and BPSK for IRMSS. The TT&C subsystem uses S-band and UHF-band data transmission. An experimental High Density Tape Recorder (HDTR) is being used to record imagery onboard. ¹¹⁾

Both countries, China and Brazil, employ widespread use of CBERS image data in their countries and offer the data also to other nations.

Source: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisa Espacial (INPE)

From the satellite CBERS 3 and on, a better performance payload was implemented, using 4 enhanced geometric & radiometric cameras.

CBERS-3 was launched  in DEc. 9th , 2013, at 11:26, from Tayuan, China. Unffortunatelly, due to a launching vehicle failure, it ended up in a wrong orbit and went back into the atmosphere.

CBERS-4 launch (initially scheduled to Dec.2015) was anticipaded to Dec. 07^th , 2014, and was a success one. Launched from Tayuan (TSLC), Shanxi,760 km southeast from Pequim, China.

CBERS 04A, sixth satellite launched in CBERS family, was successfuly launched on Dec 20^th , 2019 (launching vehicle LM-4B), also from Taiyuan (TSLC) in China.

Assembling, integration & Testing phases of  CBERS 04A

Starting in Nov. 2017 and finishing in April 2019, the so called AIT activities (Assembling, Integrating & Testing) of  CBERS 04ª were all  executed in Brazil, at INPE LIT (Integration and Testing laboratory) inside INPE´s facilities at São José Campos / SP – Brasil.

Once the AIT activities were completed, the modules were separated once again and sent to CAST in China, where they were assembled and submitted to a electrical test (to make sure no damage occurred during the transportation process from Brasil to China), then once again uncoupled for the transportation to the launching center in Taiyuan (TSLC), to be prepared into the LM-4B launching vehicle.

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