Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket launches Mexican satellite

A Russia's Proton-M space rocket has put a Mexican QuetzSat-1 telecommunications satellite into a designated orbit on Thursday night, a Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) spokesman said. "The separation of the spacecraft from the carrier rocket was conducted as scheduled and the satellite was put into its designated orbit," the spokesman said. The Proton-M carrier rocket was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan and the satellite separated from the rocket on Friday at 7:45 Moscow time [3:45 GMT]. This was the second successful launch of Proton-M carrier rockets equipped with a Briz-M booster, following a recent string of launch failures in the Russian aerospace industry. On August 18, a Russian Proton-M rocket failed, causing the loss of an Express-AM4 satellite designed to provide digital television and secure government communications for Siberia and the Far East. One week after the Express-AM4 went off course, a Soyuz-U booster malfunctioned, preventing a Progress M-12M cargo spacecraft from reaching orbit and a link-up with the International Space Station (ISS).