Russian Rocket Crashes After Launch

In a setback for the Russian space program, a Zenit-2 rocket bearing a Russian military satellite crashed to Earth on Tuesday moments after taking off from Baikonur Cosmodrome and burned in a region of Kazakhstan.

The launch failed when the engine in the first stage of the rocket inexplicably shut down 48 seconds after launch, Russian authorities said. No one was injured in the crash.

Sea Launch, a multinational venture to launch rockets from an oceangoing platform to be based in Long Beach, Calif., plans to use the same model rocket. But officials from Boeing Corp., one of the partners in the project, said the crash did not shake their faith in the Zenit-2 rocket.