Chang Guang JL1 Satellite Fleet News Scraper

Scrapes news and articles from Chang Guang Satellite Technology (长光卫星) — operators of the JL1 (吉林一号) constellation, the largest commercial high-resolution EO fleet in China with 100+ satellites in orbit.

This actor covers all five news channels on jl1.cn: company news, media coverage, announcements, industry trends, and application news. For each article it extracts the full text, publication date, and satellite metadata (name, sensor type, launch vehicle, resolution) where mentioned.

Use Cases

• Track JL1 constellation growth: new satellite IOC, decommissioning, and fleet milestones
• Monitor commissioning announcements for competitive GEOINT analysis (Maxar/Planet benchmarking)
• Extract launch event data (vehicle, date, satellite name) for TLE-augmented fleet tracking
• Feed news into maritime DA or agriculture monitoring competitive-intel pipelines
• Research Chinese commercial EO market developments

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum number of articles to scrape (0 = no limit)
channels	array	all	Which news channels to scrape. See channel keys below.

Channel Keys

Key	Chinese Label	Content
company_news	公司要闻	Corporate announcements, satellite launches, government visits
media_coverage	媒体报道	Third-party media articles covering JL1
announcements	公司公告	Official notices: conferences, open-house events, activity launches
industry_news	业界动态	Broader commercial space industry news
application_news	应用新闻	Satellite imagery application demonstrations (disaster response, agriculture, etc.)

Output Fields

Field	Type	Description
article_id	string	Numeric ID from the URL (null for external media links)
subchannel	string	Chinese channel label
subchannel_key	string	English channel key
title_zh	string	Article title in Chinese
body_html	string	Full HTML body
body_text	string	Plain text of article body
publish_date	string	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD)
source_url	string	Canonical article URL
satellite_name	string or null	JL1 satellite name if mentioned (e.g. 吉林一号高分03D55星)
bus_type	string or null	Satellite bus/platform type
sensor_type	string or null	Sensor type (光学 / 视频 / 多光谱 / 夜光 / SAR)
resolution_meters	float or null	Ground resolution in meters
launch_date	string or null	Launch date if mentioned (YYYY-MM-DD)
launch_vehicle	string or null	Launch vehicle (e.g. CZ-2D, Kuaizhou-1A)
images	string[]	Image URLs from the article body

Example Output

{
  "article_id": "5398",
  "subchannel": "公司要闻",
  "subchannel_key": "company_news",
  "title_zh": "我国成功发射"吉林一号"高分03D55星",
  "body_text": "...",
  "publish_date": "2026-06-01",
  "source_url": "https://www.jl1.cn/news_view.aspx?id=5398",
  "satellite_name": "吉林一号高分03D55星",
  "sensor_type": "光学",
  "launch_vehicle": "CZ-2D",
  "launch_date": "2026-06-01",
  "images": ["https://www.jl1.cn/UpLoadFiles/Images/..."]
}

Notes

• The site uses Chrome UA detection. The actor uses core_crawler (impit Chrome fingerprint) which satisfies this automatically with no proxy required.
• External media coverage articles (channel media_coverage) link to third-party sites. article_id will be null for these since no jl1.cn ID is present in the URL.
• Satellite metadata fields are extracted from article body text via regex — present only in articles that explicitly mention satellite technical details.
• The company news channel has approximately 179 pages (~895 articles). Scraping all channels without a maxItems cap may produce 3,000–5,000 articles.