Video and photos of Soyuz launch

BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: April 17, 2014

A Russian-built imaging satellite launched Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket to supply Egyptian authorities with high-resolution views of Earth for environmental, scientific and military applications.

EgyptSat 2 is owned by Egypt's National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences, a government agency tasked with gathering and studying satellite imagery of the Earth.

Fitted with an Earth-viewing telescope and camera capable to spotting surface features as small as one meter, or 3.3 feet, the satellite lifted off at 1620 GMT (12:20 p.m. EDT) on top of a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The three-stage launcher flew northeast from the sprawling space base before deploying the EgyptSat 2 spacecraft into orbit about eight minutes after liftoff.

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