Moscow - XINHUA
Russia has successfully launched a telecommunication satellite which was put on orbit by the jubilee mission of the Proton rocket, Roscosmos Federal Space Agency said Monday.
"Yamal-401 satellite has been placed at the designated orbit and separated from the booster," Interfax news agency quoted the Roscosmos head Oleg Ostapenko as saying.
This was the seventh Proton' s launch in 2014 and its 400th launch during the rocket' s service which has started in 1965.
Yamal has initially been put on the transitional orbit 180-km high. Later the space vehicle was elevated to its permanent geosynchronous orbit at nearly 36,000 km distance form the Earth.
The separation took place at 12:17 Moscow time (0917 GMT).
The Proton-M has experienced several failures in 2013 and 2014. The previous successful launch of Proton-M was conducted on Oct. 21 when the carrier rocket sent an Express-AM6 communications satellite to space.