Just over three weeks after Russia launched the Kosmos 2555 spacecraft for the Russian military onboard an Angara 1.2 rocket, the country has now launched the Bars-M military surveillance satellite. The Soyuz 1.2a lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome and placed the payload into a Sun-synchronous orbit.
Liftoff occurred at 08:03 UTC on May 19. This was the 5th military launch by Russia in the past few months, an amount not seen by the country for quite some time.