BEIJING - A Chinese Mars orbiter named Yinghuo-1 was successfully launched on Wednesday morning from Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, China's authorities said.

The orbiter was launched by a Zenit-2 booster rocket at 4:16 am Beijing time Wednesday (2016 GMT Tuesday), hitching a ride on Russia's Phobos-Grunt (Phobos-Soil) craft, an unmanned probe on Phobos, a moon of Mars, said China's State Administration for Sciences, Technology, and Industry for National Defence.