Russia cancels rocket launch for second day running

Moscow:Russia on Wednesday canceled a high profile rocket launched at the last minute for the second day running, in a fresh setback for the country s...

Moscow: Russia on Wednesday canceled a high-profile rocket launched at the last minute for the second day running, in a fresh setback for the country's space programme.

Launch of the flagship Angara A5, a powerful spacecraft designed to carry heavy payloads into low Earth orbit, was canceled two minutes before lift-off, the head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency said, saying he suspected a software failure.

“The command has been issued: launch aborted,” the launch director had said on an official live broadcast of the event.

Roscosmos head Yury Borisov later told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency: “It was a failure in the engine start control system. Most likely, it is a software error.”

The mission had already been delayed by 24 hours after a planned launch on Tuesday was also called off at the last minute.