At the seventh attempt, Russian technicians successfully launched Europe's MetOp-A weather satellite Thursday after a spate of glitches and bad weather since July, according to dpa. A newly designed Soyuz-2 booster rocket blasted off with the probe from the Baikonur space centre in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. The satellite was due to be brought into orbit 800 kilomtres above the Earth over the next three days. The original July 17 date for the launch of Europe's first weather satellite was postponed owing to technical faults on the rocket. Two more launches were aborted that month, and another in early October. A pre-launch sequence malfunction and poor weather at Baikonur had thwarted further attempts on Tuesday and Wednesday. MetOp is designed to circle the earth around the two poles every 100 minutes at an altitude of 800 kilometres. Three satellites in the series will eventually give information about the continent's weather and provide environmental data. Implemented jointly by Eumetsat and the European Space Agency (ESA), the project is planned to run for 14 years at a cost of 2.4 billion euros (3 billion US dollars).
