Russia’s Proton-M carrier rocket put the U.S. EchoStar-16 telecommunications satellite into the designated orbit on Wednesday, Nov 21, a Roscosmos spokesman said, according to RIA Novosti.

“The spacecraft separated from the Briz-M launch vehicle at 7:43am Moscow time [3:43 GMT],” he said.

The rocket blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 10:31pm Moscow time (18:31 GMT).

Equipped with 32 Ku-band transponders, EchoStar-16 was designed by Space Systems/Loral to provide expanded services to more than 14 million direct-to-home television subscribers in the United States. It has a life span of 15 years.

It is the 10th Proton launch this year and the 76th since commercial operations began in 1996. The launch vehicle has been used to orbit five EchoStar payloads.