Russia launches six US satellites
2013-02-06 21:18
Moscow - A Russian Soyuz rocket on Wednesday successfully
launched six US telecommunications satellites from the Baikonur space centre
Moscow leases from the ex-Soviet state of Kazakhstan.
The Roscosmos space agency said the launch went off
without a hitch after being delayed by a day due to bad weather in the Central
Asian nation.
The Globalstar satellites' launch came less than a week
after a US satellite sent up by a Zenit rocket plunged into the Pacific Ocean
less than a minute after taking off from a Russian-Ukrainian sea platform.
The cause of that accident is still under investigation.
Russia's space programme leads the world in the number of
commercial launches and is used by other nations to put up both private and
military satellites.
But its launches are watched especially closely because
Russia provides the world's only manned link to the International Space Station.
Moscow's space programme has been hit by a string of
embarrassing failures in the past two years that resulted in several leadership
shakeups.
