President Xi Jinping called on China and Brazil to continue deepening their cooperation in space to bring more benefits to the two peoples after a jointly developed satellite was successfully launched in China on Friday.

The CBERS-4A, the sixth satellite of the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite program, was lifted atop a Long March 4B carrier rocket at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in North China’s Shanxi province and was later placed into a sun-synchronous orbit about 628 kilometers above the Earth.

In a congratulatory letter sent to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Xi said that the CBERS program, initiated by China and Brazil 31 years ago, sets a good example for high-technology and space cooperation among developing countries.

He expressed the hope that the two nations could continue to push forward the research and development of new satellites to enrich the content of the bilateral strategic partnership and bring more benefits to the two peoples.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, in his congratulatory letter, also spoke highly of the space cooperation between China and Brazil. He said the new satellite will play an important role in the monitoring and utilization of natural resources of both countries.

Developed by the China Academy of Space Technology and Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the CBERS-4A carries three optical apparatus – a Chinese panchromatic, multispectral imager and Brazil’s multispectral camera, as well as a wide-field imager. It is tasked with producing remote sensing data to serve a wide range of public services in the two countries, including land resources survey, environmental inspection, climate change research, disaster prevention and agricultural forecast, according to the China National Space Administration.

The administration noted that the satellite will help Brazil improve its environmental monitoring of the Amazon Region and other places.

Once the satellite starts formal operation, it will gradually replace the CBERS-4, which was launched by a Long March-4B from the Taiyuan center in December 2014 and has been working since then.