MOSCOW, July 9 (Itar-Tass) —— A Proton-M carrier rocket with the Sirius-5 satellite abroad blasted off form Baikonur on Monday evening, July 9.

The rocket lifted off at 22:38 Moscow time. It is carrying the satellite Sirius-5 made by Space Systems/Loral (USA) for the global satellite telecommunication operator SES (Luxembourg) and is intended for providing the full range of broadcasting, broadband access and VSAT network services to Europe, Baltic and African countries.

At 22:48 Moscow time, the Briz-M booster and the satellite separated from the carrier rocket. The booster will deliver the satellite to the target orbit. The satellite is scheduled to reach the target orbit at 07:50 Moscow time on July 10, Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov todl Itar-Tass.