Turkey’s newest communications satellite soared into space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Friday, and these spectacular images show the middle-of-the-night liftoff of the spacecraft’s Russian Proton rocket booster before it disappeared into low clouds.
A Russian Proton rocket boosted a Turkish telecommunications satellite into space Friday after a blazing liftoff from Kazakhstan, and a Breeze M upper stage injected the 5.4-ton broadcasting craft into an orbit ranging more than 20,000 miles above Earth nine hours later.
A Proton rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 2040 GMT (4:40 p.m. EDT) Friday with Turkey’s Turksat 4B communications satellite.
Russian ground crews moved a Proton rocket to its launch pad in Kazakhstan on Tuesday for liftoff with a Japanese-built broadcasting platform for Turkey’s national telecom satellite operator Friday.