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Soyuz rocket launches a military payload In the early hours of April 17, 2026, a Soyuz-2-1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk military launch site with a classified cargo for the Ministry of Defense.
The expected ground track of the ascent trajectory for Soyuz rocket during launch in April 2026. Soyuz rocket launch on April 17, 2026, at a glance:
Preparations for flight Around April 10, 2026, Russian authorities issued multiple warnings to air and sea traffic about upcoming rocket launches: one on April 13 and April 29, with launch windows between 21:00 and 23:59 UTC, and another between April 14 and April 30, with an unusually long window between 00:00 and 16:00. As noted by a space historian Bart Hendrickx, the announced danger zones matched known impact sites for the payload fairing of the Angara-1.2 rocket and for the second stage of the Soyuz-2 rocket, either indicating parallel launch campaigns for two vehicles based in Plesetsk or intentionally creating a confusion as a countermeasure against a potential attempt by Ukrainian forces to strike a fueled rocket on the launch pad. According to the statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense, distributed by the official Russian media around 03:00 Moscow Time on April 17, 2026, the Soyuz-2-1b rocket lifted off as planned with multiple spacecraft for the Ministry of Defense. Soon after 02:30 Moscow Time, multiple sightings of what appeared like a rocket ascent was reported in Finland. Shortly thereafter, the US Space Force catalogued an object associated with the launch in a 457 by 547-kilometer orbir with an inclination 98.33 degrees toward the Equator.
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