HELSINKI — China added a third trio of spacecraft to a group of remote sensing satellites Saturday, marking the country’s 52nd launch of the year.

A Long March 6A rocket lifted off at 12:34 p.m. Eastern (1634 UTC) Sept. 6 from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, North China. The Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology (SAST) under state-owned space contractor CASC announced complete success of the mission around an hour after liftoff, revealing the payload to be Yaogan-40 (03) satellites.

The satellites will carry out electromagnetic environment detection and related technical tests, according to SAST, using the typical opaque description for such missions. The DFH Satellite Co., Ltd under CASC’s China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) stated that it developed the spacecraft, provid

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