Dubai: Two Saudi satellites that were due to be launched today (Saturday) will be launched tomorrow instead, as the launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket, with 38 foreign satellites on board, including the two Saudi ones, has been postponed until Sunday, local media reported.
Earlier the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) announced that it was set to launch its 17th satellite called “Shaheen Sat” on Saturday morning from Kazakhstan. The KACST satellite is dedicated to space photography and tracking of marine vessels, and the second is the educational satellite (CubeSat).
The other satellite was from the King Saud University, which is the first Saudi university to launch a CubeSat cube satellite with a size of (10 * 10 * 10) cm and a weight of 1kg. It also has a ground station that can communicate with small and large satellites and the International Space Station.
According to the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the launch of satellites from more than half a dozen Asian, Arab and European countries, as well as Canada and Brazil, which had been scheduled for 0607 GMT on Saturday, is now set for 0607 GMT on Sunday, Roscosmos added.
“The launch of the Soyuz-2.la rocket... with 38 foreign satellites on board from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan has been postponed until a later date,” Roscosmos said.
Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin said the launch was postponed after a surge in voltage was detected.
“We decided not to take the risk,” Rogozin told the RIA Novosti news agency.
The rocket was due to place in orbit 38 satellites from 18 countries, including South Korea, Japan, Canada, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Germany, Italy and Brazil.
Among them are the Challenge-1, the first satellite made completely in Tunisia, which was created by the Telnet telecommunications group.
