MOSCOW, Feb. 28 (Xinhua) -- Russia launched a carrier rocket on Saturday to send a military satellite into orbit, a spokesman for the Russian Space Forces said.

    The Proton-K rocket, with a Cosmos satellite atop, blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Saturday morning, spokesman Alexei Zolotukhin was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

    The launch is successful and the satellite is expected to separate from the carrier rocket in hours, Zolotukhin said.

    The three-stage heavy-class Proton-K rocket, produced by the Khrunichev space scientific and production center, is widely used in delivering Russian and foreign satellites to orbits. The launchweight of a Proton-K is about 700 tons.