Several weeks ahead of a planned liftoff in late December, the biggest new Russian rocket to fly in a generation has rolled to its launch pad at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia for preflight testing.
A Russian military communications relay platform blasted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, riding a Soyuz rocket and Fregat upper stage into an egg-shaped orbit reaching nearly 25,000 miles above Earth.