MOSCOW (Sputnik) — A Russian Soyuz rocket has successfully taken a military satellite to the Earth’s orbit after blasting off earlier on Friday from the Plesetsk space port in northwestern Russia, its Defense Ministry said.
"The spacecraft, which was launched in the interests of the Russian Defense Ministry, has been placed into orbit as scheduled, its control has been taken over at 22:27 MSK [19:27GMT] by the Aerospace Forces," the ministry said.
The Soyuz-2.1v carrier rocket blasted off Friday at 9:04 p.m. local time. This was the second launch this year from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, almost 500 miles north of Moscow. Last month, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket placed another military satellite into orbit.
