spacetoday.net: Officials: Israel satellite launch delayed by technical issues, not politics

Posted: Wed, Dec 5, 2007, 6:48 AM ET (1148 GMT)
PSLV launch (ISRO)

Officials in India and Israel said this week that a planned launch of an Israeli reconnaissance satellite on an Indian rocket had been delayed because of "technical difficulties" and not because of political pressure from the U.S. The TechSAR satellite (also known as Polaris), a synthetic aperture radar imaging satellite, was scheduled to launch this fall on an Indian PSLV rocket. The launch has been postponed for an unspecified period, and no reason for the delay has originally been given. Media reports in both India and Israel suggested that the launch was cancelled because of political pressure applied on the two nations by the United States. Indian and Israeli officials later said that the delays in the launch of the satellite had nothing to do with any kind of political influence, but instead were related to unspecified "technical difficulties" with the planned launch.