Mohe ground station boosts polar satellite data coverage

by Riko Seibo
Beijing, China (SPX) Feb 16, 2026

For engineer Shi Shengpu and his colleagues, this Spring Festival will be their first spent at the Mohe Satellite Data Receiving Station of the China Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station, which began operations on Dec 12 in Mohe, China's northernmost city in Heilongjiang province.

Developed by the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Mohe facility is the country's highest latitude satellite data receiving station and marks a major step forward in national land observation satellite data reception capability.

By leveraging its high latitude location, the station has extended China's satellite data reception footprint by about 4 million square kilometers, according to station director Shi.

The expanded coverage strengthens China's ability to observe polar and high latitude regions, boosting the efficiency and span of satellite data acquisition for land surveys, environmental protection, weather forecasting and disaster monitoring.

While remote sensing satellites orbit Earth and capture large volumes of observation data, ground stations such as Mohe are responsible for receiving and processing this information so it can be applied to real world needs.

The Mohe station currently operates three satellite data receiving systems configured for S and X dual band and dual polarization signals, with each system handling on average more than 24 satellite tracks per day.

At present the station supports data reception for 25 national land observation satellites, including spacecraft in the resource, environmental disaster reduction and high resolution series.

With near real time transmission and fully automated reception, and with key technical indicators reported at advanced international levels, the station had successfully received data from 36,001 satellite tracks by the end of 2025.

Over that period it acquired more than 1,775 terabytes of satellite data, achieving a data reception success rate of more than 99.79 percent.

Shi noted that the Mohe facility also extends the daily reception time of individual polar orbiting satellites by about 24 minutes, an increase of more than 20 percent compared with previous coverage.

He and his team spent more than three years building the Mohe station, working through harsh weather and remote conditions to bring the high latitude ground station into full operation.