{"id":65,"date":"2006-06-11T10:08:41","date_gmt":"2006-06-11T02:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=65"},"modified":"2009-07-09T07:23:05","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T23:23:05","slug":"jiuquan-satellite-launch-center-or-shuang-cheng-tzu-missile-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/?p=65","title":{"rendered":"Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (or Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">Bryan asked about the installation northeast of China&#8217;s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (\u9152\u6cc9\u885b\u661f\u767c\u5c04\u4e2d\u5fc3) in the post about Chinese replica of CCK AFB.\u00a0 Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, aka Eastwind Space Campus (\u6771\u98a8\u592a\u7a7a\u57ce), was built where Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center (\u96d9\u57ce\u5b50\u98db\u5f48\u6e2c\u8a66\u4e2d\u5fc3) used to be.\u00a0\u00a0The installation\u00a0Bryan asked about used to be the Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) site.<\/p>\n<p>Before CHEN, Huai&#8217;s epic U-2 mission to photograph Shuang Cheng Tzu\u00a0on January 13, 1962, the US already had had images of the missile center on hand, obtained by one of the CORONA satellite missions.\u00a0 However, the poor quality and small scale precluded the possbility of detailed analysis.\u00a0 This was why the US wanted to cover it by the U-2.<\/p>\n<p>Although the satellite images had been obtained in 1961, it took time to analyze and interpret the images and the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) did not publish the interpretation report until March 1962.\u00a0 The report fixed the location of the missile center at 41.05N, 110.15E and located it on the following map:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Location of Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center\" alt=\"Location of Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/sct_location_npic_r36_62.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Source: NARA<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The report also included a\u00a0map of the missile center.\u00a0 You may compare it with the current <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=q&#038;hl=en&#038;q=41N+100E&#038;t=k&#038;om=1&#038;ll=41.078575,100.466194&#038;spn=0.11646,0.343323\" target=\"_blank\">Google Maps image<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Map of Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center\" alt=\"Map of Shuang Cheng Tzu Missile Center\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/sct_map_npic_r36_62.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Source: NARA<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The 1961 CORONA image of the SAM site is below.\u00a0 Note the small scale:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"SAM site (CORONA)\" alt=\"SAM site (CORONA)\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/sct_sam_npic_r36_62.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Source: NARA<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The image obtained by CHEN, Huai was of better quality, despite the obliqueness:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"SAM site (GRC-100)\" alt=\"SAM site (GRC-100)\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/sct_sam_grc100.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Source: NARA<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>From both images, you can see that the launch sites were not of the familiar Star-of-David configuration:<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Star-of-David SAM Site\" alt=\"Star-of-David SAM Site\" src=\"http:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/sam_star_of_david.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\">Source: CIA<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Why the differences?\u00a0 It is possible that the Soviet Union\u00a0gave the Chinese a different design or the Chinese designed the SAM site by their own.\u00a0 I think the former is more likely because I doubt that the Chinese had the capability to design the launch site at that time.\u00a0 According the Chinese book \u98db\u9cf4\u93d1, PLA conducted a live SAM test in August 1959 at Shuang Cheng Tzu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bryan asked about the installation northeast of China&#8217;s Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (\u9152\u6cc9\u885b\u661f\u767c\u5c04\u4e2d\u5fc3) in the post about Chinese replica of CCK AFB.\u00a0 Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, aka Eastwind Space Campus (\u6771\u98a8\u592a\u7a7a\u57ce), was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[141,139,88,44,41,109],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-u-2","tag-chinese-military","tag-corona","tag-sam","tag-tackle","tag-u2","tag-109"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taiwanairpower.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}