Chinese officials have long expressed interest in deploying a satellite network, or potentially several, to beam broadband Internet signals across China and other nations within its sphere of influence.
There are two major initiatives underway in China to create a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink network, which has been banned by the Chinese government within its territory.
The first batch of 18 satellites for one of these Chinese networks launched into low-Earth orbit on Tuesday.
A Long March 6A rocket delivered the 18 spacecraft into a polar orbit following liftoff at 2:42 am EDT (06:42 UTC) from the Taiyuan launch base in northern China's Shanxi province.
The Long March 6A is one of China's newest rockets and the country's first to employ strap-on solid rocket boosters, capable of deploying a payload of up to 4.5 metric tons (9,900 pounds) into a 700-kilometer (435-mile) Sun-synchronous orbit.
The rocket successfully placed its payload of 18 Qianfan satellites into the correct orbit, and the launch mission was declared a complete success by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the largest state-owned contractor for the Chinese space program.
Qianfan, which translates to "Thousand Sails," refers to the 18 satellites launched Tuesday, the first of potentially thousands planned by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST), a company supported by Shanghai's municipal government.
The network developed by SSST is also known as the "Spacesail Constellation."
Details of this constellation were only made public by Shanghai officials last year.
A filing with the International Telecommunication Union indicates that developers of the Shanghai-based megaconstellation initially plan to deploy 1,296 satellites at an altitude of about 1,160 kilometers (721 miles).
Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, stated that the constellation "will provide global users with low-latency, high-speed and ultra-reliable satellite broadband Internet services."