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Soyuz launch from Kourou rescheduled due to unreadiness of French telemetry station

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Telegram earlier that it was the French side that had requested to reschedule the launch

MOSCOW, December 3. /TASS/. The launch of the Soyuz-ST carrier rocket with Galileo navigation satellites from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana has been rescheduled due to the unreadiness of a French telemetry station, Russia’s Roscosmos state space agency said in a statement on Telegram.

"The launch of the Soyuz-ST-B rocket carrying Galileo spacecraft, which was scheduled to take place at the Guiana Space Center on December 3, has been postponed for 24 hours because of the unreadiness of a French telemetry receiving station," the statement reads. According to Roscosmos, the launch has been rescheduled for 03:23 am Moscow time (00:23 am GMT) on December 4.

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Telegram earlier that it was the French side that had requested to reschedule the launch.

Head of the French launch service provider Arianespace Stephane Israel said overnight into Wednesday that the launch of the Soyuz-ST-B rocket carrying two satellites for the European Union’s Galileo navigation system had been postponed for a day due to bad weather and would take place early on December 3. Rogozin specified later that there were no technical issues and the launch had been postponed because of winds at high altitudes.

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