“The launch went smoothly,” Col. Alexei Zolotukhin, spokesman for the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, told Interfax on Friday.
He added that the launch was controlled by the Forces’ ground-based automated control system.
Zolotukhin said the rocket put the Cosmos-series military satellite into a designated orbit at 09:49 a.m. Moscow time (0549 GMT).
The military satellite is expected to separate from the rocket’s DM-2 upper stage at 4:27 p.m. Moscow time (1227 GMT) on Friday, the spokesman added.
The launch was the 311th and the final one using Russia’s Proton-K rocket, which will no longer be built in Russia and will be replaced by a modernized version of Proton-M rocket.
AGB/MB/GHN
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