NEW DELHI – India has launched a rocket carrying dozens of satellites fromIndia and six other countries from its island space center today [Friday].

A. S. Kiran Kumar, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization saidthe satellites successfully reached orbit after the polar satellite launchvehicle took off from Sriharikota, an island off Andhra Pradesh state inthe country’s southeast.

Apart from two Indian weather satellites, the rocket carried 28 micro andnano-satellites from Canada, Finland, France, South Korea, the UnitedKingdom and the United States.

The last launch of India’s first privately built satellite failed in Augustbecause of a heat shield problem.