spacetoday.net: Soyuz launches five satellites

Posted: Sun, Jul 22, 2012, 10:11 AM ET (1411 GMT)
Soyuz-FG launch of Canopus-B and other satellites (Roscosmos)

A Soyuz rocket successfully launched a collection of small satellites on Sunday. The Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2:41 am EDT (0641 GMT, 12:41 pm local time) Sunday and placed five satellites into Sun-synchronous orbits. The Soyuz's payload included the MKA-PN1 and Canopus-B remote sensing satellites for Russia, the BKA imaging satellite for Belarus, the TET-1 technology demonstration satellite built by the German space agency DLR, and exactView-1, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) satellite built by SSTL in the UK for Canadian company exactEarth. The launch had been blocked earlier this year by Kazakh officials because they had not yet approved the launch trajectory for the Soyuz, which would drop stages in different areas than a typical Soyuz launch from Baikonur.