Russia launched a Proton-M carrier rocket with three Glonass navigation satellites atop from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on Monday.

A Live TV broadcast showed that the rocket blasted off at 13:38 Moscow time (1038 GMT) from the Central Asian launching pad.

Anatoly Perminov, head of the Federal Space Agency, pledged earlier that six satellites for the Glonass satellite network would be launched by the end of 2009.

However, Perminov announced on Dec. 5 that Monday's launch was the last this year and the launch of three other Glonass satellites was postponed until February 2010.

Glonass, the Global Navigation Satellite System, is the Russian version of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS). Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

The Glonass satellite cluster is now composed of 19 satellites, including 16 in use, two under regular maintenance and one with an expired service life. The system requires 18 satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of Russia.