The satellite was launched on Tuesday evening by a Long March-3B rocket off from a base in the southwestern province of Sichuan and has reached its proper orbit and is operating normally.

This satellite launch is part of China’s space program, which included China’s first manual space docking mission as well, sending its first female astronaut Liu Yang into space on the Shenzhou-9 earlier this year. A Chinese rocket also successfully launched a Venezuelan earth-observation satellite earlier last month.