Science
TANSAT
Carbon Dioxide Monitoring Satellite · Chinese Academy of Sciences / MOST
Right now
LiveIt moves every second. See exactly where it is — worked out from its orbit, on your own device — on the live 3D globe.
- Over
- —
- Altitude
- —
- Speed
- —
TanSat, launched in December 2016 as China's first satellite dedicated to monitoring global carbon dioxide — making China only the third country after Japan and the United States to track greenhouse gases from its own dedicated spacecraft. TanSat measures atmospheric CO2 with enough precision to detect the specific signature of human-caused emissions from individual cities, comparing plumes over Tangshan and Tokyo in later research. A larger successor constellation, TanSat-2, is now in development to monitor emissions city-by-city twice daily.
Its orbit
- Orbit
- Low Earth Orbitcan appear as a fast-moving star at dawn or dusk
- Altitude
- 424–442 mi (683–712 km)
- Inclination
- 98.5°
- One orbit
- 98.6 minutes14.6 orbits a day
- NORAD ID
- 41898
- Int’l designator
- 2016-081A
- Launched
- 2016
Orbital elements from CelesTrak, as of 22 Sep 2026.
More science
- TAURUS-1 (JINNIUZUO 1)Chinese Commercial Technology Demonstrator
- TECMSTechnology Demonstrator
- TEIKYOSAT-4 (OORURI)Japanese University CubeSat
- TELEOS-2Singaporean SAR Imaging Satellite
- TEMPSAT 1Thermal / Drag Research Satellite
- TEN-KOHJapanese University CubeSat