Posted: Fri, Nov 7, 2014, 8:14 AM ET (1314 GMT)
A Dnepr rocket successfully placed several Japanese spacecraft into orbit on Thursday. The Dnepr rocket, a converted SS-18 ballistic missile, lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:35 am EST (0735 GMT, 1:35 pm local time) Thursday carrying the Advanced Satellite with New System Architecture for Observation (ASNARO) satellite and several secondary payloads. The satellites were successfully placed into sun-synchronous orbits. ASNARO is a high-resolution Earth imaging spacecraft developed by NEC Corporation in Japan. Four smaller spacecraft, developed by various Japanese universities, also launched on the Dnepr to perform various Earth observation and astronomy missions.
