China has launched a second remote-sensing satellite for Egypt, just weeks after lofting the first in the series to orbit. A Long March 2C rocket lifted off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 12:02 a.m. EDT on March 13 (0402 GMT, or 12:02 p.m. Beijing time). Orange exhaust pushed the rocket off the pad, with insulation tiles falling away as the rocket climbed into the sky. The Horus 2 Earth-imaging satellite and the rocket's second stage were later tracked and cataloged in a sun-synchronous orbit almost identical to that of the Horus 1 satellite, which launched on Feb. 24.
