Students from more than 20 universities across Europe have designed, built and on Thursday launched their own satellite into space. The SSETI Express satellite is about the size of a standard washing machine and was shot into space by a Russian launcher from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia, the European Space Agency said.

If the satellite settles into a successful orbit around the earth, it will encircle the planet from pole to pole at a height of around 690 km (314 miles).

The SSETI Express took a year and a half to build. Some 200 university students from more than 20 universities in 12 countries participated in the project.

Copyright Reuters, 2005