According to a report of Newspaper -"People's Daily" on Oct 11, 2007: In order to carry out China's promise to international community in disaster prevention and reduction, and to support Asian-Pacific countries in earth observation activities, China Meteorological Administration (CMA) announced officially today that China's Fengyun meteorological satellite series starts to offer earth observation services for 17 Asian-Pacific countries right from now on at the "Asia-Pacific Regional Workshop on GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) Information Access" co-organized by CMA and Earth Observation Organization on Oct 11, 2007. CMA sent another 11 sets of DVB-S to 11 Asia-Pacific countries, including Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Kyrgyzstan and Laos, in addition to the 6 sets previously donated to Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Thailand.

After put into domestic operational service in 2005, DVB-S has been broadcasting data products of 9 satellites every day, disseminating data up to 23GB per day. It has attracted more than 130 clients in such fields as meteorology, water conservancy and agriculture, and generated huge economic and social benefits in weather forecast, climate prediction, disaster monitoring, and environmental remote sensing. Beginning from this year, China will formally change the operating band of DVB-S to C band, so as to enlarge the current signal coverage of DVB-S to the entire Asia-Pacific region, making it a regional system of the data sharing system for global earth observation to fulfil its important responsibility in distributing earth observation data in Asia-Pacific region.

Source from www.spacechina.com by Wang Yixin

Translation by Yu Sufen