MOSCOW, December 27. /TASS/. A satellite intended to serve the needs of the Russian Defense Ministry has reached its intended orbital path after being launched earlier on Wednesday from Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport by a Soyuz-2.1v rocket, the Defense Ministry said.
"At the estimated time, the spacecraft was launched into orbit and taken under the control of ground-based facilities of the Russian Aerospace Forces," the ministry said in a statement. "Stable telemetry communication has been established and maintained with the spacecraft, while its onboard systems are functioning normally," it added.
The Soyuz-2.1v rocket was launched at 10:03 a.m. Moscow time (7:03 a.m. GMT) from the Plesetsk spaceport in the Arkhangelsk Region in northwestern Russia. The satellite was launched and orbited normally, the Russian Defense Ministry stressed.
After launching the satellite into orbit, officers from the Aerospace Forces’ Main Center for Outer Space Reconnaissance made an entry about the spacecraft in the Russian Space Control System’s Main Register of Space Objects, after which they began actively analyzing and processing information about the new space object.