This Day, That Year

Item from April 9, 1990, in China Daily: A scientist at the Xichang Satellite Launching Center watches the Long March 3 with laser tracking facilities as the rocket puts AsiaSat-I into orbit on Saturday evening.

China's Long March 3 rocket booster for the first time successfully sent a foreign telecommunications satellite into geo-synchronous orbit. The AsiaSat-I launch not only indicated that China's rocket and satellite technology had entered a mature and practical-use phase, but also marked the country's entry into the global commercial launch market, Premier Li Peng said at the Beijing command center.

China is boosting its share of the global commercial satellite launching business, with about 45 of its satellites launched for 20 countries and regions as of 2013, or about 3 percent of global market share. The country aims to increase that to 15 percent by 2020, Xinhua News Agency reported.