Posted: Thu, Nov 28, 2002, 12:41 PM ET (1741 GMT)
A Kosmos booster launched two small satellites into low Earth orbit early Thursday. The Kosmos-3M lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 1:07 am EST (0607 GMT) Thursday and placed its payload, AlSat-1 and Mozhayets, into 700-kilometer sun-synchronous orbits. The 90-kg Mozhayets spacecraft, built in part by students of Russia's Mozhaisky Military Space Academy, will be used to test navigation satellite technologies as well as study the effects of radiation exposure on satellite electronics. AlSat-1, also weighing 90 kilograms, was built for the Algerian government by British small satellite manufacturer SSTL. AlSat-1 is the first spacecraft of the Disaster Monitoring Constellation, a network of spacecraft to be built by SSTL for several nations to monitor the environment during natural disasters. Thursday's launch was the fourth this year for the Kosmos-3M.

Related Links:

•  AFP article
•  AP article (via SPACE.com)
•  RIA Novosti article
•  Interfax article