Japanese satellites launched on Soviet-era missile

A decommissioned Soviet-era ballistic missile — adapted for space launches instead of nuclear war — rocketed out of an underground silo and sent five Japanese Earth observing satellites into orbit Thursday. The 111-foot-tall Dnepr rocket fired out of a missile silo at the Dombarovsky military base in southern Russia at 0735 GMT (2:35 a.m. EST; 10:35 a.m. Moscow time) and deployed its passenger spacecraft in orbit nearly 14 minutes later, according to Kosmotras, a Moscow-based company with joint Russian-Ukrainian ownership that oversees the commercial exploitation of the launcher. The rocket is a modified R-36M missile developed in Ukraine. The Western designation for the missile is the SS-18 “Satan.” More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Nov 7)