TAIYUAN, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- China launched the third earth resources satellite jointly developed by China and Brazil to take high-definition photographs of the earth's surface on Wednesday morning.

    The satellite, named 02B, was launched on a Chinese Long March-4B carrier rocket which blasted off at 11:26 a.m. (Beijing Time) from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in north China's Shanxi Province.

    The satellite separated from the rocket 12 minutes after lift-off, entering its preset sun-synchronous orbit, at a perigee of 738 kilometers and an apogee of 750 kilometers.

    The 1,452-kilogram satellite with a designed life span of two years, will gather resources information and send images to China, Brazil and other countries, for use in agricultural production, environmental protection, city planning and land resources surveys.

    This is the third earth resources satellite jointly developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) and the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE). The previous two satellites were launched in 1999 and 2003.

    They are remote sensing satellites that can collect information through high definition cameras.

    The previous two Sino-Brazilian satellites, with 1,200 users in China and 3,000 users in Brazil, have produced more than 1 million images.