MOSCOW. Dec 30 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has canceled a planned annual meeting on Saturday of its top officials that was to be attended by the chief executives of all enterprises in the space rocket industry.
The reason for the cancellation was the planned first test launch of a Soyuz-2.1v light carrier rocket, a Roscosmos source told Interfax-AVN. The rocket will carry a research satellite and some military satellites to orbit.
"The postponement of the launch of the new Soyuz-2.1v rocket from December 23 to Saturday due to extra technical tests that were needed has made the Roscosmos leadership change its plans, and the meeting will take place later," he said on Friday.
The meeting was to deal with organizational and output quality issues in the industry, the source said.
He said the meeting was to be chaired by Roscosmos head Oleg Ostapenko, who is expected to attend the rocket's launch at Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
Ostapenko's spokeswoman, Irina Zubareva, confirmed the meeting was being postponed and said the new date for it would be announced later. She said Ostapenko was leaving for Plesetsk on Saturday to "take part in a meeting of the state commission" where the date for launching the Soyuz-2.1v would be set.
Earlier reports said the rocket's launch, which has been put off repeatedly, had been scheduled for the afternoon on December 28.