Posted: Fri, Jun 20, 2014, 10:17 AM ET (1417 GMT)
A Dnepr rocket launched more than three dozen small satellites into orbit early Friday, the largest number of spacecraft launched on a single mission to date. The rocket lifted off from the Dombarovsky missile base near Yasny in southern Russia at 3:11 pm EDT (1911 GMT, 1:11 am local time Friday) and placed the cluster of satellites into sun-synchronous orbits. The largest satellites carried by the Dnepr were KazEOSat-2, built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. for the government of Kazakhstan; and Deimos-2, built by South Korea's Satrec Initiative for Spanish company Elecnor Deimos. The Dnepr carried a number of smaller satellites and CubeSats, including 11 satellites for remote sensing company Planet Labs. The 37 satellites launched broke the record of 32 launched on another Dnepr last November.

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