BOGOTA - A Russian-Ukrainian rocket put Libertad-1, the first Colombian satellite, into orbit Tuesday, the satellite's designers said.



The satellite, 10 cm high, 10 cm wide and weighing 1 kg, is the smallest of its kind, with a basic mission of transmitting "compressed signals," capturing position images and receiving temperature data.

The Engineering and Astronomic Observation Faculty of Sergio Arboleda University in Bogota headed the project and contacted the Russian-Ukrainian Kosmotras enterprise to launch it.

In the future, the small satellite may also retransmit audio signals and transmit digital images taken by a built-in camera.

Satellites from 13 other countries also traveled Tuesday with Libertad-1 from the Baikonur cosmo drome in Kazakhstan.