This morning’s scheduled historic first launch of a Soyuz rocket from the European Space Agency’s French Guiana facility was delayed when “an anomaly detected during fueling of the Soyuz launcher’s third stage” interruped the countdown.
According to launch operator Arianespace, the Soyuz (pictured being set up on the pad) and its two Galileo satellites, along with the launch facility, have been placed in a safe mode. A new launch date will be formally announced later today, but an earlier statement by the European Commission’s wonderfully-named esPRESSo news service said that 24h would do the trick, with lift-off now expected for 1230 CEST/1030 GMT/0730 local time tomorrow, Friday 21 October.
The launch will be the first shot in a push to orbit enough Galileo navigation spacecraft for global coverage in 2014 – that’s seven years behind the original plan, so a day more to loft the first couple units is neither her nor there.
Watch the launch online here.
