Images of Friday night's Soyuz launch

BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: July 19, 2014

A high-flying package of live animals, plant seeds, and materials samples shot into space Friday aboard a retrievable Russian Foton satellite, launching a two-month mission focusing on microgravity research into biological and physical sciences.

Liftoff occurred at 2050 GMT (4:50 p.m. EDT) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it was 2:50 a.m. Saturday local time.

The three-stage Soyuz 2-1a rocket, a modernized version of the venerable launch vehicle, put the Foton M4 space capsule in orbit less than 10 minutes later.

The Russian Federal Space Agency, or Roscosmos, declared the launch a success on its website.

The more than 15,000-pound Foton M4 space capsule launched by the Soyuz rocket is due to spend up to 60 days in orbit, hosting 22 experiments supplied by Russian and German institutions probing questions in biological and materials sciences.

Read our full story for details on the mission.

Post by Федеральное космическое агентство.

Credit: Roscosmos