DEFENSE/China launches 2 more rockets Thursday; no threat to Taiwan: MND

Taipei, Jan. 11 (CNA) China on Thursday launched another two rockets, which were carrying satellites, but neither of them passed near Taiwan and therefore did not pose any threat to the country, according to Taiwan's defense ministry.

In a statement, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said it had learned earlier that China was preparing to launch an unknown number of rockets from its Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at around 11:50 a.m. Thursday and from a location at sea near Shandong Province at about 1:30 p.m. the same day.

The ministry said one rocket was eventually launched from each site, with the first one flying over the Indian Ocean, and the other one passing over the East China Sea and the West Pacific region. The two rockets were carrying satellites and posed no threat to Taiwan's national security, as their trajectories were far away from the country, the MND said.

The MND did not provide any further information, saying only that it had been closely monitoring the rocket launches and was keeping the Taiwanese public informed.

The ministry issued the statement two days after a similar rocket launch by China triggered a public nationwide alert in Taiwan for the first time. The carrier rocket was launched from China's Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province at around 3:03 p.m. Tuesday.

As the rocket passed over Chenzhou in China's Hunan Province, however, it began to diverge from the trajectory forecast by The United States' Federal Aviation Agency, and it took a path towards Taiwan, the ministry said.

Due to the divergence and the risk of possible damage on the ground in Taiwan, the country's Air Force Combatant Command made a decision to send out an alert on the Public Warning System (PWS).

The nationwide alert, delivered mainly to mobile phones, caused some confusion, as the bilingual message said in English "Missile flyover Taiwan airspace, be aware," while the Chinese-language part of the message said it was a "satellite."

The MND later issued a public apology, saying it was a translation error, as the English wording used in the emergency text message had not been properly updated.

On Thursday, Chinese state media reported on the latest rocket launches, saying that close to noon a Kuaizhou-1A carrier rocket took off, carrying the new Tianxing-1 02 satellite, which will be used mainly for space environment research.

The second launch was the maiden flight of the new all-solid-motor Gravity1 rocket, which was commissioned by the Shandong-based commercial aerospace enterprise Orienspace Technology, and it took off from a platform in the Yellow Sea, near Haiyang port, the reports said.

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