Russia Launches Military Satellite

Russia's Space Forces launched on Thursday a Soyuz-U carrier rocket with a Cosmos-series military satellite, SF spokesman Col. Alexey Zolotukhin said.

The rocket was launched from the Plesetsk space center in northern Russia.

"The launch has been carried out to expand the cluster of Russian military satellites in orbit," Zolotukhin said.

The official did not provide details on the specific nature of the spacecraft but could be a Kobalt-M spy satellite with advanced reconnaissance and terrain mapping capabilities.

In this capacity it will join Russia's Oko (Eye) orbital missile early warning network, which consists of about 70 satellites.

The Soyuz-U rocket is designed to orbit Soyuz and Progress manned and cargo spacecraft, as well as special-purpose satellites such as Cosmos, Resurs-F, Foton and Bion.

Nimiq-6 launched from Baikonur
On Thursday another Proton-M carrier rocket equipped with an upper stage Breeze-M booster was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The latest launch is to place a Canadian Nimiq-6 telecommunications satellite in orbit, the fifth so far.

The Nimiq-6 communications satellite weighs 4.75 tons and will provide television broadcasting and communication services to Canada.

The satellite is equipped with 32 Ku-band transponders.

The service life of the satellite is supposed to be 15 years.