The Soyuz-ST-B carrier rocket with the Fregat booster and two Galileo FOC satellites was launched from the Guiana Space Center (Kourou) in French Guiana on Saturday. The live broadcast is being held on the website of the Arianespace company, Trend reports citing TASS.
The rocket is to bring on the orbit two Galileo FOC navigation satellites for the Galileo global navigation satellite system.
The launch was initially scheduled for the night of December 2 but was postponed twice. For the first time it was postponed due to bad weather and for the second time the telemetry station of the Guiana Space Center was not ready.
The Soyuz at GSC is an international space project of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, the European Space Agency, France’s National Center for Space Studies (CNES) and the leading enterprises of the rocket and space industry in Russia and France. As part of the project, specialists from the Center for Operation of Ground-Based Space Infrastructure Facilities at the GSC built a special launch complex for Soyuz-ST launch vehicles. Since the first launch on October 21, 2011, 25 Soyuz-ST rockets have been launched.
Taking into account the two new vehicles of the Galileo project, a total of 28 satellites (including experimental and working vehicles) will be launched into low-earth orbit. The previous launch took place on July 25, 2018, when an Ariane 5 rocket launched four Galileo FOC satellites.