A Russian Proton-M rocket completed the successful launch on Saturday of an advanced Chinese communications satellite that should help expand television coverage in parts of Southeast Asia. The Roscosmos space agency said the AsiaSat 7 satellite was placed in its designed orbit at 0423 GMT after being launched from the Baikonur space centre in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan on Friday evening.
The mission was accomplished after a recent string of Russian space failures that included the botched launch this summer of what was billed as Europe's largest telecommunications satellite. The Hong Kong-based Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company (AsiaSat) said in a statement that its seventh orbiter will support "a broad range of applications for the Asia-Pacific region" including television broadcasts. "With AsiaSat 7 successfully launched ... we can assure continuity of service to customers, while at the same time adding to our on-orbit capacity to service new business," said the company's chief executive William Wade.
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