The launch of the launch vehicle was postponed from December 6 due to the need to refine the upper stage
MOSCOW, November 24. /tass/. The launch of the Proton-M launch vehicle is scheduled for 15:09 Moscow time on December 12. This is stated in the message of Roscosmos, distributed on Wednesday.
"On December 12, 2021, at 15:09 Moscow time, a pair launch of the Express-AMU7 and Express-AMU3 spacecraft is planned from the Baikonur cosmodrome using a Proton-M carrier rocket with a Briz-M upper stage," the message says.
Earlier, Roscosmos CEO Dmitry Rogozin told TASS that the launch of the Proton-M carrier rocket with the Express-AMU3 and Express-AMU7 telecommunications satellites was postponed from December 6 to December 12 due to the need to refine the upper stage. Later, the state corporation clarified that the specialists of the Khrunichev Center eliminated the remark identified earlier on the Briz-M upper stage.
Previously, these satellites were supposed to be launched on a Proton-M carrier rocket in 2020. In September last year, the General Director of JSC "Information Satellite Systems named after Academician M. F. Reshetnev" Nikolay Testoyedov in an interview with TASS reported that the production of the Express-AMU3 and Express-AMU7 satellites is delayed due to the late delivery of the payload for these devices from Italy in connection with the coronavirus pandemic. In December last year, Rogozin said that the launch of satellites was postponed to the end of 2021. In mid-November, Roscosmos announced plans to launch them on December 6.
