The Dnepr carrier rocket crashed shortly after liftoff from the Baikonur space center due to a first stage engine shutdown. The wreckage was discovered at 8:05 Moscow time (4:04 a.m. GMT), 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the space center on a steppe, a long distance from any residential buildings.
Igor Panarin, the Federal Space Agency's press secretary, said maximum permissible concentration of noxious substances was only exceeded within a 1 km radius around the crash site.
He said earlier a crater at the site of the crash proved that spontaneous ignition had occurred and that combustion products were low toxic.
The Dnepr, a civilian version of the heavy R-36M2 Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) intercontinental ballistic missile, was launched around midnight Wednesday (8 p.m. GMT), and would have orbited 18 Russian and foreign-made mini-satellites.
Kazakhstan's presidential representative at Baikonur, Adilbek Basekeyev, said specialists were examining the crash site from helicopters and planes.
"There are no casualties, the rocket fell in a deserted place," he said.
Kazakh Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov signed a resolution Thursday on forming a government commission to investigate the consequences of the crash.
Russia has been using converted ballistic missiles to launch satellites into orbit since 1999. The Dnepr, which was seen as a highly reliable carrier rocket, has a lift-off weight of about 250 metric tons and can carry a satellite payload of up to 3.7 tons to orbits at an altitude of 300-900 kilometers (185-560 miles).
