Roscosmos Launches two Ekspress Satellites

On Monday, December 13 at 7:07 am ET (12:07 UTC), Roscosmos launched two Ekspress satellites atop a Proton-M/Briz-M rocket from site 200/39 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This configuration of Proton-M has four stages. Briz-M, the fourth stage, takes the satellites to their proper place in orbit after the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd stages get them to orbit. This flight is taking two satellites, Ekspress AMU 3 and Ekspress AMU 7. These are communications satellites for Russian Domestic Communications Services. This launch was originally planned for early December, but the rocket had to be rolled back because of a discovered issue with the upper stage. This was the 112th Proton-M launch and the 130th orbital attempt of 2021. Proton rockets have been launching since 1965.