Nation's satellite data reception coverage reaches new heights

For Shi Shengpu and his colleagues, the upcoming Spring Festival carries special significance — it will be the first time they celebrate the holiday at the Mohe Satellite Data Receiving Station of the China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station, which commenced operations on Dec 12 in China's northernmost city, Mohe, Heilongjiang province.

Developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Aerospace Information Research Institute, the Mohe station is the highest-latitude satellite data receiving facility in China, representing a significant leap in China's land observation satellite data reception capabilities.

Taking advantage of its unique geographical position, it has expanded China's satellite reception coverage by approximately 4 million square kilometers, according to Shi, director of the station.

The breakthrough significantly enhances China's observational capabilities in polar and high-latitude regions, improving both the efficiency and coverage of satellite data acquisition, which is crucial for applications such as land surveys, environmental protection, weather forecasting, and disaster monitoring.

While remote sensing satellites orbit the Earth and provide a wealth of valuable observational data, the ground stations receive and process the information to meet human needs for understanding the planet.

The Mohe station has built three satellite data receiving systems boasting a capability of receiving S/X dual-band and dual-polarization data, with each system processing an average of more than 24 tracks per day.

The station currently supports data reception tasks for 25 national land observation satellites, including those in the resource, environmental disaster reduction series, and high-resolution series.

With near-real-time transmission, fully automated reception capabilities and key technical indicators reaching international advanced levels, the station successfully had received data from 36,001 satellite tracks, acquiring over 1,775 terabytes of data, with a data reception success rate of over 99.79 percent by the end of 2025.

"It also extends the daily reception time of single polar-orbiting satellites by about 24 minutes, an increase of over 20 percent," Shi said.

In fact, Shi and his colleagues have spent over three years on the construction of the Mohe station.