Swarm probes blast off from wintry launch pad

A swarm of three European magnetic field research satellites rocketed into orbit Friday from a wintry launch pad in northern Russia, kicking off a four-year mission to catalog the sources behind Earth's shield against radiation and solar storms.

Behind a veil of thick fog as temperatures hovered near the freezing mark, the European Space Agency's $280 million Swarm mission lifted off at 1202:29 GMT (7:02:29 a.m. EST) Friday at the top of a 95-foot-tall Rockot launch vehicle from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, a military launch facility about 500 miles north of Moscow.

The Swarm satellites were tucked inside the Rockot's nose cone at liftoff, and the launcher successfully guided the spacecraft into a near-circular orbit about 300 miles above Earth before deploying the payloads 91 minutes into the mission.

Controllers at the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, confirmed all three satellites - nicknamed Alpha, Beta and Charlie - were in the correct orbit and responding to commands.

Credit: ESA TV