Russia launches long-delayed lab module to space station

A heavy-lift Proton rocket roared to life and blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday, sending a long-delayed 44,000-pound laboratory module into orbit for an eight-day flight to the International Space Station.

The towering Proton, the most powerful rocket in the Russian inventory, took off at 10:58 a.m. EDT (7:58 p.m. local time), quickly climbing away from the sprawling cosmodrome atop a long jet of flaming exhaust. Nine minutes and 40 seconds later, the unpiloted Nauka module, also known as the multi-purpose laboratory module, or MLM, separated from the Proton's upper stage, deployed its solar arrays and set off after the space station.