Russia launched a Soyuz rocket early on Tuesday carrying two satellites designed to monitor the space weather around Earth and 53 small satellites, including two Iranian ones, Russia's Roscosmos space agency said. The Soyuz-2.1 launch spacecraft, which lifted off from Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome, carried two Ionosfera-M satellites, which will become part of the space system for monitoring the Earth's ionosphere, the agency said.

