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Security satellite scopes cannabis crops from orbit

China’s Ministry of Public Security discovered the largest known marijuana plantation in the country since its founding in 1949 using high-definition images from the satellite Gaofen 1, South China Morning Post reported, citing a now-deleted online announcement from the National Space Administration. Aside from the cannabis plantation in China’s northeast, the satellite also spotted opium plantations in the region, an offshore oil-smuggling warehouse near Fujian, and passageways used to illegally cross China’s borders with North Korea and with the countries bordering Xinjiang in the far west. Gaofen 1 is first in a series of seven satellites meant to encircle the globe in a surveillance network.

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