Posted: Thu, May 4, 2006, 10:41 AM ET (1441 GMT)
A Russian Soyuz booster launched what is believed to be a reconnaissance satellite for the Russian military on Wednesday. The Soyuz-U booster lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia at 1:38 pm EDT (1738 GMT) and placed the satellite, identified only as Kosmos 2420, into a low polar orbit. While Russian media offered no information on the mission of the satellite, Western observers believe that the spacecraft is an optical reconnaissance satellite of either the Yantar or Kobalt classes. The Russian publication Kommersant reported earlier this week that the Russian military had no spy satellites in orbit, after its last one, a US-PU class electronics intelligence satellite, shut down last week.

Related Links:

•  Spaceflight Now article
•  Itar-Tass article
•  RIA Novosti article
•  NasaSpaceFlight.com article
•  Kommersant article