The year 2017 saw a total of 90 known orbital launch attempts from seven nations and space ports in eight different countries. 2017 had the second most orbital launch attempts of any year in the current century, short of 92 launches in 2014 and showing a slight increase from 2016 that had 85 known launch attempts.
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Two days after placing an Earth-imaging satellite into orbit, China was in action again on Monday for the country’s fourth launch of the month and the final expected Chinese mission in 2017, involving a Long March 2C rocket lifting the third group of Yaogan-30 electromagnetic-sensing satellites into orbit.
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China sent the second satellite of the LKW constellation into orbit on Saturday via a Long March 2D rocket, coming less than three weeks after the first LKW satellite reached orbit in what observers suspected was the first launch in a new series of reconnaissance spacecraft flying under the cover of land surveying missions.
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China was in action again on Sunday, launching a Long March 3B rocket carrying the Chinese-built AlcomSat-1 communications satellite for operation by the Algerian Space Agency as a dual-purpose spacecraft for civilian and military communications.
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China conducted its 15th orbital launch of the year on Sunday, involving a Long March 2D rocket lifting the LKW-1 imaging satellite into orbit.
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Coming on the heels of a failed launch from the Vostochny Cosmodrome earlier in the week, Russia successfully launched a Soyuz 2-1B rocket from the country’s prime military launch site at Plesetsk, placing the Lotos-S1 No. 803 electronic intelligence-gathering satellite
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China was in action for the second time this week on Friday with the launch of a trio of Yaogan-30 satellites atop a Long March 2C rocket to join a growing constellation of what are believed to be electronic intelligence-gathering satellites residing in non-synchronous Low Earth Orbits 600 Kilometers in altitude.
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China’s Long March 6 rocket carried out its second flight on Tuesday to lift a trio of Jilin-1 high-resolution video satellites into orbit to join a growing constellation of commercial Earth observation satellites.
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China conducted a secretive launch from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on Friday, involving a Long March 2C rocket deploying a trio of satellites into orbit under the designation Yaogan-30 Group 01.
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Russia’s trusted Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the early hours on Friday with a Glonass navigation satellite to replace a recently-failed member of the country’s Global Navigation Satellite System
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