MOSCOW - Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket was launched on Friday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan with a Chinese communications satellite "AsiaSat-7", according to Russia's Federal Space Agency Roscosmos.

Roscosmos' live broadcast on its official website showed that the Proton-M rocket atop the Briz-M upper stage was launched at 23:10 Moscow time (1910 GMT). The separation of the satellite from the rocket was scheduled for 08:23 Moscow time (0423 GMT) on Saturday.

The AsiaSat-7 which belongs to the Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Limited (AsiaSat) located in Hong Kong, China, is a new generation satellite designed to replace AsiaSat 3S at the orbital location of 105.5 degrees East.

The new satellite was expected to support a broad range of applications for the Asia-Pacific region, including television broadcast and VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) networks.