Russia launches European telecoms satellite

A Russian Proton-M rocket completed the successful launch Wednesday of a European telecommunications satellite after a two-month delay.

The Roscosmos space agency said the SES-4 satellite was placed in its designed orbit at 0448 GMT after being launched from the Baikonur space centre in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan on Tuesday evening.

The Luxembourg-registered operator said the satellite will help Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) deliver North American feeds to the European affiliates of the CNN cable news network.

The launch had originally been scheduled for December but had to be delayed after a problem was detected with the Russian rocket's Briz-M upper stage.

The same unit's failure has cost Russia the loss of several key commercial and intelligence satellites in the past year.