Russia's Proton-M Rocket puts US telecommunications satellite in orbit

  Russia's Proton-M carrier rocket put the US EchoStar-16 telecommunications satellite in the designated orbit on Wednesday, a Roscosmos spokesman said. "The spacecraft separated from the Briz-M launch vehicle at 7:43 Moscow time [3:43 GMT]," (RIA Novosti) quoted the spokesman as saying. 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.