Places · Spaceport
Xichang Satellite Launch Center
The inland site that flies most Chinese geostationary and lunar missions, including the Chang'e probes.
- Where
- Sichuan, China
- Coordinates
- 28.25°N 102.03°E
- Since
- 1984
- On the map
- Show me
- More
- cmse.gov.cn
The sky from here
This is a zone 3 sky — rural transition on the nine-grade scale, Bortle 3–4, reaching roughly magnitude 6.2–7.0 unaided. The Milky Way is clearly there but loses its detail near the horizon. Light domes are obvious in several directions.
That grade puts 106 of the catalogue within easy reach of 10×50 binoculars and 106 within a 130mm — 38 of them need no instrument at all. Genuinely dark sky — zone 2 or darker — starts about 37 km north-west.
There is no season here in which the sky fails to get properly dark — the Sun clears eighteen degrees below the horizon on all 365 nights.
The centre of the galaxy reaches 33° at its highest, which puts the brightest part of the Milky Way clear of the horizon murk without ever being overhead. Of the 110 Messier objects, 2 never set from here and every one of them rises at some point in the year.
Of everything in the catalogue, Triangulum Galaxy, Pleiades and Ring Nebula are the best served here, climbing to within a few degrees of straight up — an object at the zenith is being seen through the least air it will ever be seen through, and the difference against the same object low in the south is not subtle.
Bode's Galaxy and Cigar Galaxy never set from this latitude, so they are available on any clear night of the year rather than for one season of it.
Read at 28.25°N 102.03°E. Darkness is estimated rather than measured; everything else follows from the latitude and holds along the whole parallel. How accurate this is.
Nearby
Questions
What part of the sky never rises at Xichang Satellite Launch Center?
Everything south of declination −62°. From 28.2°N that is a cap 28° in radius centred on the south celestial pole, which is 6.0% of the whole celestial sphere. It is out of reach permanently rather than seasonally: no time of year and no instrument brings it above the horizon. The matching 6.0% around the north celestial pole is the same geometry inverted, and never sets.
How many hours of true darkness does Xichang Satellite Launch Center get?
From about 6 hours 56 minutes at the thin end of the year, near 21 June, up to 10 hours 51 minutes around 21 December. That counts only proper astronomical night, with the Sun eighteen degrees down; the merely-dark hours either side of it are longer. Unlike sites further from the equator, no part of the year here is written off entirely.
What orbits can be reached from Xichang Satellite Launch Center?
Anything inclined at 28.2° or more, for free. A rocket launched due east from 28.2°N arrives in an orbit inclined at 28.2° — the shallowest the site can reach without spending propellant to turn the plane — and steeper orbits are simply a matter of launching on a different heading. The Space Station's 51.6°, and any polar or sun-synchronous orbit, are all available from here. What the latitude charges for is the other direction: a geostationary orbit sits at 0° inclination, and all 28.2° of the difference has to be bought back with propellant that could have been payload.
How far is Xichang Satellite Launch Center from the other sites on this map?
Its closest neighbour on this map is FAST — the Five-hundred-metre dish, 559 km away to the south-east. The nearest other spaceport is Wenchang Space Launch Site, 1,320 km to the south-east. Measured as the great circle between coordinates, which is the shortest path across the surface and rarely the one you could travel.