A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Glonass navigation satellite withstood a lightning strike during lift off on Monday, and still succeeded in delivering its payload into orbit.
The Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in far Northern Russia at 2:23 a.m. EDT (2:23 p.m. GMT+8) on Monday. Seconds later after lift off, a bolt of lightning struck the launcher as it climbed away from Plesetsk.
Rockets are known to trigger lightning as they ascend through thick clouds or thunderstorms. One of the famous past incidents of lightning striking a launch vehicle include the Apollo 12 mission to the moon. The Saturn V rocket, which was hit by lightning twice during lift off from Florida in November 1969.
The lightning knocked offline the Apollo 12 command module's fuel cells and affected the spacecraft's instrumentation, but did not impact the vehicle flight computer or guidance system. Thanks to quick thinking from the mission control and the crew on board, the mission was able to continue to the moon.
After Soyuz rocket's nine-minute climb into space, a Fregat upper stage took over to inject the Glonass M navigation satellite into a near-circular orbit at an altitude of mroe than 19,100 kilometers and an inclination of 64.8 degrees, according to the US military tracking data.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that ground controllers were in contact with the Glonass satellite after the launch, and all systems on the spacecraft were functioning normally.