The Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (STEP) project in the town Lulangin of Tibet’s Linzhi City carried out water vapor observations on January 22, 2019, using a tethered balloon (Jimu-1), developed by the CAS Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR）.The research team was successful in making water vapor observation at a height of more than 6,200 meters above sea level. This is the first time that such a task has been achieved at this altitude.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will release about 5 million gigabytes of data related to Earth sciences, biology and ecology from around globe, allowing scientists and officials worldwide to study and tackle issues in climate change, food security, disaster relief and environmental protection. The data can be accessed on the CASEarth Databank at data.casearth.cn, which was launched on Tuesday. Around 1.8 million gigabytes of content are remote-sensing data, 2.6 million gigabytes is on biology and ecology, and 0.4 million gigabytes is on the atmosphere and ocean, said Guo Huadong, chief scientist of CASEarth, the academy's Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project.

A workshop was held on January 7, 2019 in Beijing to mark the work of using Science and Technology (S&T) for Disaster Relief included in the CAS list of 40 hallmark S&T achievements as a result of China’s 40-year reform and opening up from 1978 to 2018.

Prof. ZHANG Bing and Prof. DING Chibiao, both from the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), received 2018 National Awards for Science and Technology during a ceremony held at the Great Hall of the People on January 8, 2019.

A remote sensing airplane made in China, the Modern Ark 60 (MA60), was delivered to AIR on Dec. 20, 2018. The plane was manufactured by Xi'an Aircraft Industry (Group) Company. Ltd.(XAC), a subsidiary of the China Aviation Industry Corporation. This is the first domestic remote sensing aircraft purchased by the Institute. and a second MA60 is expected to be delivered in the near future.

The opening ceremony for the Comprehensive Experimental Site of SAR (synthetic aperture radar) Remote Sensing was held in Zhangjiakou in north China’s Hebei Province on November 10, 2018. As Asia’s first large-scale basic science experimental facility for far-field microwave remote sensing, the Site was jointly built by the Aerospace Information Research Institute and the Government of Zhangjiakou, a co-host city and venue of 2022 Winter Olympics.