The first Long March-2C rocket was launched 40 years ago over a desert in northwest China, sending a retrievable satellite into orbit. The model has since become a backbone launch vehicle for the country's interplanetary expeditions.

After its maiden flight on Sept. 9, 1982, the rocket gradually replaced the older Long March-2 and undertook all of the country's retrievable satellite launches in the following decade.

Following several upgrades, the Long March-2C is currently 43 meters long, and its carrying capacity to low Earth orbit has increased from 1,800 kg to 2,500 kg. It is China's longest-serving carrier rocket and is on the brink of a salvo of new launches.

The Long March-2C is the first Chinese carrier rocket type to undertake international launch services. In the 1980s, the rockets sent a French company's microgravity test device and a Swedish science test satellite into space.

In 2003, a Long March 2C/SM rocket delivered a satellite, which belonged to a space probe program jointly carried out by China and the European Space Agency.

The successful international launches were only part of many significant achievements by the Long March-2C. Over the past four decades, the rocket has pioneered many upgrades and new rocket technologies to make more advances.

The latest example occurred in 2019 when scientists tested a technology that can accurately control the landing site of falling rocket parts following a Long March-2C rocket launch. The test results showed that the technology narrowed the landing areas from 1,350 to 60 square km by more than 96 percent, massively improving China's inland rocket landing safety.