A Russian rocket carrying a Mexican satellite into orbit has crashed just minutes after takeoff.
Russian space officials were quoted as saying that the Proton-M carrier rocket had suffered a malfunction about six minutes after launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 16.
The Interfax news agency said the rocket crashed into the Chita region of Siberia.
A later report said most of the rocket had burned up as it reentered Earth's atmosphere.
Proton-M has a history of mishaps, leading to the loss of three navigation satellites last year.
The failure came just hours after a separate glitch, in which a Russian Progress spacecraft linked to the International Space Station (ISS) failed to switch on its engines on command from mission control in a planned maneuver to shift the ISS into a higher orbit.
