Russia on Thursday successfully launched a Soyuz rocket for the first time since the failure of a similar rocket aborted a manned take-off to the International Space Station (ISS) on October 11.
"On Thursday at 03:15 (0015 GMT) a Soyuz-2.1B rocket was successfully launched carrying a satellite for the Russian military," the Russian defence ministry said in a statement. The satellite reached its orbit at the set time, according to the ministry.
"This is the first launch of a rocket from the Soyuz family since the October 11 accident," Russia's space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Twitter.
It was the third launch of a Soyuz rocket from Russia's northern Plesetsk launch pad this year, the military said.
The satellite launch had originally been planned for October 19 but was postponed after the accident that saw two astronauts make an emergency landing minutes after blast-off from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome.
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