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Issues detected in Briz-M booster, Roscosmos CEO says

According to Roscosmos, the launch of the Proton-M rocket with the Briz-M booster, carrying the Ekspress-AMU3 and Ekspress-AMU7 spacecraft, will be rescheduled for a backup date

MOSCOW, December 9. /TASS/. Issues detected in the Briz-M booster are the reason why the launch of the Proton-M rocket had to be rescheduled, CEO of Russia’s Roscosmos state space agency Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Telegram on Thursday.

"Another issue has been detected in the booster. We won’t take any risks, senior technicians have decided to carefully refine the rocket complex at the operations and checkout facility. We will move the launch to a backup date that will be announced at a later time," he said.

According to Roscosmos, the launch of the Proton-M rocket with the Briz-M booster, carrying the Ekspress-AMU3 and Ekspress-AMU7 spacecraft, will be rescheduled for a backup date. The launch had earlier been rescheduled from December 6 to December 12 due to the need to refine the booster.

The state corporation specified later that experts from the Khrunichev Center had resolved the issue detected earlier in the Briz-M booster.

The Ekspress-AMU3 and Ekspress-AMU7 telecom satellites, made by the Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems Company and the European company Thales Alenia Space Italia, will be put into orbit in the interest of the Russian Satellite Communications Company.

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