Russia Launches New Military Satellite

MOSCOW (Interfax-AVN) -- The Russian Space Forces launched a Kosmos-3M rocket carrying a military satellite from the Plesetsk space center on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Russian Space Forces, told Russia's Interfax News Agency.

The satellite will serve the Russian Defense Ministry's purposes and will join the Russian military satellite constellation, he said.

"The rocket launch passed normally," he said.

The Titov space test and control center is now tracking the rocket, and the satellite is to be put into orbit at 6:08 p.m. Moscow time (2:08 p.m. GMT), when it will be out of sight of ground automatic control systems, Zolotukhin said.

Tuesday's successful Kosmos-3M liftoff came less than a week after the failure of another Russian-built rocket, a Proton-M booster, which crashed on the uninhabited steppes of Kazakhstan while attempting to orbit a Japanese communications satellite.

An investigation into that failed launch from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome is underway.

SPACE.com Staff Writer Tariq Malik contributed to this report from New York City.

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