notablelaunch2026-09-17

SpaceTY's new Tianyi satellites bring daily-revisit InSAR to orbit

SpaceTY

China in Space: the Kuaizhou-11 pair's 55-degree orbit is designed for daily InSAR revisit instead of a multi-day cycle.

// sources · 4 attached

updates

2026-09-19A Kuaizhou-11 rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 17, carrying the Tianyi-51 (Caiyun SAR01) and Tianyi-52 (Tianyuan YG01) satellites into a 55-degree medium-inclination orbit, per Launch Library 2, Chi...

what happened

A Kuaizhou-11 rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 17, carrying the Tianyi-51 (Caiyun SAR01) and Tianyi-52 (Tianyuan YG01) satellites into a 55-degree medium-inclination orbit, per Launch Library 2, China in Space, and a Xinhua wire brief carried by ifeng.com. China in Space reports the satellites are C-band InSAR spacecraft built by Chinese commercial manufacturer SpaceTY (Spacety), resolving to 3 meters over a 25km swath or 2 meters over a 40km swath, with onboard pre-processing, and designed for daily interferometric revisit of imaging sites rather than the multi-day cycle typical of sun-synchronous InSAR satellites. Global Times, a Chinese state outlet, described the pair as the world's first commercial medium-inclination InSAR satellites successfully placed in orbit, per Global Times, unverified outside state media.

why it matters

A medium-inclination design aimed at daily interferometric revisit, instead of the days-long cycle of conventional sun-synchronous InSAR satellites, would be a capability step for ground-deformation monitoring (mining, geohazards, infrastructure) if the daily-revisit performance holds up in service, sharpening SpaceTY's pitch against ICEYE's and Umbra's own InSAR offerings in the crowded Chinese commercial SAR field.