Two Citation S/II Remote Sensing Aircraft (hereafter referred to as RSA) of Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS), are minitype business aircraft produced by Cessna Aircraft Company on 1986 and modified for multiple scientific applications. With solid contributions made to aeronautic and astronautic earth observation progress in China, they are still one of the few irreplaceable high-performance experiment platforms in China with their overall technological advantages keeping a leading position. Catered for customized services to central and ministerial missions, key S&T projects, and demand from international, local, social and college cooperation, RSA have adhered to non-profitable flight and data sharing, provided A-level operation for aerial flight tests, and carried out airborne remote sensing experiments with varied optical, infrared, microwave and atmospheric sensors. In organization, RSA have stayed under the administration of Institute of Remote Sensing & Digital Earth, CAS. Together with Satellite Ground Station (another National Scientific Key Infrastructure of RADI) and Digital Earth Scientific Platform, RSA constitutes an integrated Satellite-Aircraft-Ground Simultaneous Earth Observation system.

Since put into operation, RSA has conducted more than 10000 sorties made its white wings seen over the vast land of China, including Pamir Mountains to the west, Heihe Basin in the east, Altai Mountains and Mohe to the North, and even China South Sea, covering an area of two million square kilometers of all provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, HK SAR, except for Taiwan and Macau.

It is our founding principle that science, remote sensing, can make this country a better place. And for more than 3 decades, we have. At the same time, we have always understood that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges. In future, we will keep improving our strength and be a critical RS data & research center, keep working as an advanced RS info-tech platform, and keep providing data support for space technology development, emergency, environment and disaster monitoring as national aviation strength.