Proton blasts off from Baikonur

A Russian Proton rocket successfully launched a military communications satellite Monday and its Breeze M upper stage deployed the classified payload about 9 hours later, according to Russian media.

The 19-story launcher blasted off at 2346 GMT (6:46 p.m. EST) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the third Raduga 1M communications satellite for the Russian military. Launch was at 5:46 a.m. local time at Baikonur.

See our full story on the launch.

Credit: Roscosmos

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