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JIUQUAN, Oct. 29-- China successfully sent an ocean-observing satellite into space on Monday, a joint mission pursued under close Sino-French space cooperation that will enable scientists to simultaneously study, for the first time, ocean surface winds and waves. The China-France Oceanography Satellite (CFOSat), atop a Long March-2C carrier rocket, took off at 8:43 a.m. from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China's Gobi Desert and entered a sun-synchronous orbit 520 km above Earth. Jointly developed by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France's space agency, the satellite will conduct 24-hour observations of global wave spectrums, effective wave height and ocean surface wind fields, said Zhao Jian, a senior official with CNSA. INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES As the first satellite-related cooperation between China and France, the CFOSat is equipped with the world's most advanced technologies. It carries two innovative radar instruments -- a wind scatterometer developed by China to measure the strength and direction of winds and a wave spectrometer developed by France to survey the length, height and direction of waves, according to Wang Lili, chief designer of the satellite at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). "The two instruments will simultaneously help scientists collect data about winds and waves at the same location for the first time," Wang said. | 
