Russia’s state commission greenlights Proton rocket’s launch with 2 foreign satellites

MOSCOW. KAZINFORM Russia’s state commission has made a decision on the readiness of a Proton-M carrier rocket for its scheduled launch with two foreign satellites from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Wednesday, the State Space Corporation Roscosmos reported on its Twitter.

«The state commission has made a decision on the readiness of the Proton-M carrier rocket for its fueling and launch scheduled for 1:17 p.m. Moscow time,» the federal space agency said, TASS reports.

The Proton-M carrier rocket with a Breeze-M booster, which is set to deliver the European Eutelsat-5WB and the US MEV-1, will blast off from site No. 200 at the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

International Launch Services Company signed a contract for this launch in 2016. Initially, the liftoff was scheduled for September 30, 2019 but was delayed due to the need to hold further tests of the booster’s control system. A source in the domestic space industry explained to TASS that the launch was delayed because the US satellite was attached incorrectly to the upper stage.

Roscosmos Head Dmitry Rogozin confirmed to reporters that a problem linked with the interface between the Russian control system and the satellites’ electronics was the cause of the launch’s delay. On September 27, the state commission made a decision to reschedule the launch for October 9.