Launched in April 2013, GF-1 is equipped with two 2 m panchromatic and 8 m multispectral cameras (PMC), and 4 wide field imagers (WFI) with 16 m MS medium-resolution and a combined swath of 830 km. The complete camera set of PMC and WFI (6 cameras) may observe simultaneously, or each camera set (PMC or WFI) may observe separately. The revisit frequency of the spacecraft is ≤4 days and the observation range of the mission covers a region between 80ºN to ~80ºS. It mainly applies in land resource investigation, mineral resource management, atmospheric and water environment quality monitoring, and natural disaster emergency response and monitoring. GF is the Chinese abbreviation for "GAO FEN" - meaning "high-resolution".

Orbital Features

Sensor Specifications

The swath for 2/8m camera is 70km and for 16m camera is 800km. the oblique viewing angle is ±25° for norm and ±35° for emergency. 

The Features 

·High resolution, GF-1 provides 2m panchromatic resolution which is the highest for civil-use satellite in China. 

·Large view for middle resolution, GF-1 has multispectral resolution 16 m and 800km swath width.

·Flexible data collection tasking, GF-1 satellite’s max oblique viewing angle is 35° and the satellite is capable of locating the target agilely and providing programming services for disaster prevention and mitigation.

·Fast image downlink, GF-1 has 2.64Gbit/s data downlink but weighs less than 1,000 kg. 

·Long design mission life, 5-8 years was designed for the mission life and is the longest life about the satellites at low orbit in China.