TanSat (CarbonSat) [TanSat Team]
Official name TANSAT
Alternative name TanSat (CarbonSat)
Cospar ID 2016-081A
Norad ID 41898
Launch date 2016-12-21
Launch site JSC
Launch vehicle CZ-2D (2)
Country/Organization China
Type application Earth Science
Operator Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
RCS size LARGE
Decay date ON ORBIT
Period (min) 98.74
Inclination (deg) 98.47
Perigee (km) 684
Apogee (km) 713
Eccentricity 0.0207587687902649
Mean motion (revs. per day) 14.5837553169941
Semi-Major axis (km) 7076.635
Raan (deg) 93.0947
Arg of perigee (deg) 182.3517
Shape Box + 2 Pan
Mass (kg) 620
Height (m) 1.8
Width (m) 1.5
Depth (m) 1.5
Span (m^2) 10
Lifetime 3 years
Contractors CAS (prime), SIMIT (spacecraft)
Equipment CarbonSpec, CAPI
Propulsion ?
Power 2 deployable solar arrays, batteries

TanSat or CarbonSat is the first Chinese minisatellite dedicated to detection and monitoring of carbon dioxide (CO2).

The TanSat project was proposed in the Chinese national program in 2010 development started in January 2011. TanSat is funded by MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology) of China.

The carries two instruments developed at CIOMP/CAS (Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics/Chinese Academy of Sciences), in Changchun, China.

  • CarbonSpec, a high-resolution Carbon Dioxide Spectrometer for measuring the near-infrared absorption by CO2
  • CAPI (Cloud and Aerosol Polarimetry Imager) to compensate the CO2 measurement errors by high-resolution measurement of cloud and aerosol

The spacecraft bus is designed and developed at SIMIT (Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology).

TanSat was launched in December 2016 on a CZ-2D (2) rocket. It was placed into a sun-synchronous orbit an an altitude of ~700 km with an inclination of 98.2º. The revisit period is 16 days.

Satellite COSPAR Date LS Launch Vehicle Remarks
TANSAT 2016-081A 2016-12-21 JSC CZ-2D (2) with Spark 01, Spark 02, Yijian ?