MOSCOW, November 21 (RIA Novosti) - 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],” he said.

The rocket blasted off from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 22:31 Moscow time (18:31 GMT).

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.