Launch of European Sentinel-3A satellite by Russian carrier rocket put off for late Feb - ESA
MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax-AVN) - The launch of the Russian carrier rocket 'Rokot' with the European Sentinel-3A satellite for the Earth's remote sensing has been postponed until the second half of February, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
The problem is in the lack of a GMP certificate for the ground equipment, ESA said.
It is known that the Russian Aerospace Forces are responsible for all the ground equipment.
The Sentinel-3A type is designed to monitor the global ocean and climate change. Its head manufacturer is the French operations division of the French-Italian concern Thales Alenia Space headquartered in Cannes. The satellite's mass is 1,250 kilograms. Sentinel-3A will be put into sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of approximately 800,000 meters.
According to Roscosmos, Russia's state corporation, it was planned to launch the European satellite on December 10 from the Plesetsk spaceport. However, two launches of the 'Rokot' were scheduled for nearly the same day due to the non-matching plans of launch activities of Eurockot and those of the military. The problem was that as of the October 1, there was only one upper stage Briz-KM rocket available and this is the type used in such launches, an industrial source told Interfax-AVN.
For these reasons, it was first decided to carry out the launch of the European satellite vehicle between December 23 and 26, and then, the launch was postponed until 2016. The latest date announced by ESA was February 4, 2016.