At 0528 GMT on 23 May 2014, a Rockot launch vehicle equipped with a Breeze KM upper stage successfully launched three store-forward communications satellites for the Russian Ministry of Defence from the Plesetsk launch site in Northern Russia. The three satellites, codenamed Cosmos 2496, 2497 and 2498 which use the Strela 3/Rodnik bus, were accompanied into a near polar low Earth orbit by a small mystery spacecraft which will presumably be called Cosmos 2499.
Post Script: A similar launch late last year caught many space and orbital analysts out (including Seradata) when Russia failed to declare that Cosmos 2491 – another small mystery spacecraft – had been aboard a Rockot flight. This has now been corrected on the Seradata SpaceTrak database.
