Posted: Thu, Jun 15, 2006, 1:42 PM ET (1742 GMT)
A Soyuz rocket launched a civilian remote sensing satellite early Thursday. The Soyuz booster lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 4 am EDT (0800 GMT) and placed the Resurs DK1 spacecraft into a low, inclined orbit. The spacecraft is the first in a new generation of Russian remote sensing spacecraft, featuring a camera capable of taking images with resolutions as sharp as one meter. Unlike previous Resurs spacecraft, this satellite is also able to downlink the images electronically, rather than capturing images on film that is returned to Earth in canisters. The spacecraft also carries an astronomical instrument called PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics) that will be used to search for antimatter and evidence of dark matter.
