A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, carrying a classified military spacecraft.
The three-stage booster lifted off at 5:30:06 a.m. EDT (09:30:06 GMT) from Site 31 at Baikonur.
Ten minutes later, the payload separated from the third stage of the launch vehicle and entered Earth orbit according to representatives of Rosaviacosmos, the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.
Although civilian personnel at Rosaviacosmos conducted the launch operations, the Russian Ministry of Defense owns the rocket's payload.
As is typical for classified launches such as this, the Ministry of Defense did not release details on the spacecraft's mission other then officially designating the spacecraft as Cosmos-2373.
The fact that a Soyuz rocket was used for the launch suggests that an imaging reconnaissance satellite was onboard. In the past this type of booster has delivered a wide variety of visual surveillance spacecraft known as Zenit and Yantar.
The majority of the satellites of this type usually take off from Russia's northern launch facility in Plesetsk, except for the newest family of satellites known as Neman.The latest spacecraft in this series was launched on May 4 from Site 1 in Baikonur.
This is the fourth launch of a surveillance spacecraft this year, which marks a resurgence of Russia's military activities in space.
The nation's Strategic Missile Forces, RVSN, which currently manage the country's military space program, has been under fire recently for allegedly neglecting military capabilities in space. Instead, the Russian press reported, RVSN funneled scarce resources available to them into modernization of the strategic missile fleet.
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