Kosmos-3M booster rocket with two space vehicles on board takes off from Plesetsk cosmodrome

A Kosmos-3M booster rocket with two space vehicles on board - Mozhayets (Russia) and AlSat-1 (Algeria) - took off from the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 09.07 Moscow time on Thursday, the press service of the Space Forces of Russia told a RIA Novosti correspondent.

The Mozhayets space vehicle is designed to train students of military-space higher educational establishments to work with real equipment and vehicles located in outer space.

The Algerian satellite AlSat-1 is designed to monitor the environment and natural and technogenic disasters. It will also help the government of Algeria assess the state of farmlands and the views on the harvest in that country.

Both 90-kilogramme satellites will be put into a solar-synchronous orbit with the distance from Earth being about 700 km.