/ Source: Reuters
A Russian rocket carrying a military satellite into orbit crashed to earth in Siberia soon after launch on Tuesday, Russian news agencies reported.
Officials said they believed no one on the ground had been hurt when the unmanned Molnia-M rocket came down in the thinly-populated Tyumen region in western Siberia.
The rocket was launched from the Plesetsk military cosmodrome. Helicopters were being used to help search for wreckage from the rocket, officials said.
“The military communications satellite has not been delivered into orbit because the rocket ... suffered engine failure,” Itar Tass news agency quoted Alexei Kuznetsov, a spokesman for Russia’s military space program, as saying.
