Serving as both a manned laboratory and an experimental testbed to demonstrate orbital rendezvous and docking capabilities, Tiangong-1, China's first space station, was launched in 2011. It has been operating soundly over the past more than 880 days.

To give a full play to the comprehensive application value of Tiangong-1, the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI) is authorized as a commercial agent for its applied data dissemination. The agreement was signed by RADI Vice Director-General LIU Jianbo in Beijing on March 2, indicating the service is available to both Chinese and foreign users as of that day.

The high spectral imager onboard Tiangong-1 is China’s best as measured by space resolution and comprehensive spectral parameters. It is on a par with world similar gears in terms of space resolution, band range, band numbers and terrain classification. So far it has provided nearly 5T data products and relevant services to many public users, including government departments, research institutes and universities, for the monitoring of land resources, ocean, forestry, agriculture and environment.