Shiyan (satellite)

Shiyan

实验卫星 Shíyàn Wèixīng
Program overview
Country	People's Republic of China
Purpose	Experimental
Status	Active
Program history
Duration	2004–Present
First flight	18 April 2004
Last flight	11 May 2024
Successes	36
Failures	0
Launch site(s)	TSLC JSLC WSLC XSLC
Vehicle information
Launch vehicle(s)	Long March 2C Long March 2D Long March 3B Long March 4B Long March 4C Long March 6 Long March 7A Long March 11 Kuaizhou 1A Kinetica 1

Shiyan (SY, simplified Chinese: 实验; traditional Chinese: 實驗; pinyin: Shíyàn; lit. 'experiment') is a Chinese experimental satellite program consisting of a variety of test satellites. Given the classified nature of the satellites, Chinese government statements regarding the missions of Shiyan satellites follow the common refrain of agricultural monitoring and space environment observation — the same offered for other classified programs such as the Tongxin Jishu Shiyan, Yaogan, and Shijian programs. Alternatively named Tansuo satellites, Shiyan satellites occupy varying orbits including low Earth, polar Sun-synchronous, geosynchronous, and highly-elliptical orbits and are believed to accomplish a diverse set of missions from rendezvous proximity operations (RPO) to earth imaging.^[1][2] Though similarly named, the Shiyan satellite program is not to be confused with the separate Shijian satellite program.