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Launch Postponed for Soyuz Rocket with Saudi Satellites

Prince Sultan bin Salman. SPA
Prince Sultan bin Salman. SPA
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Launch Postponed for Soyuz Rocket with Saudi Satellites

Prince Sultan bin Salman. SPA
Prince Sultan bin Salman. SPA

The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket, with two Saudi and other satellites on board, has been postponed until Sunday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

The launch of 38 satellites from more than half a dozen countries, which had been scheduled for 0607 GMT on Saturday, is now set for 0607 GMT on Sunday, Roscosmos added.

"The launch of the Soyuz-2.la rocket... with 38 foreign satellites on board from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan has been postponed until a later date," Roscosmos said.

Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin said the launch was postponed after a surge in voltage was detected.

"We decided not to take the risk," Rogozin told the RIA Novosti news agency.

The rocket was due to place in orbit 38 satellites from 18 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Japan and Canada.

Saudi Arabia's Shaheen Sat satellite would have been the 17th spacecraft from King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology to be launched in Kazakhstan. Shaheen Sat would be utilized for photography and maritime tracking purposes.

CubeSat, meanwhile, was designed by King Saud University for educational use. The university would have been the first in the Kingdom to send a satellite into space.

“I am hopeful that great moves and achievements will be made so that we can continue to be in the lead. The Kingdom deserves to be in a position of leadership in everything, including space activities,” Prince Sultan bin Salman, chairman of the board of directors of the Saudi Space Authority, said Friday.

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Australian Woman Unknowingly Gives Birth to a Stranger's Baby after IVF Error

FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
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Australian Woman Unknowingly Gives Birth to a Stranger's Baby after IVF Error

FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
FILE - Lab staff prepare small petri dishes, each holding several 1-7 day old embryos, for cells to be extracted from each embryo to test for viability at the Aspire Houston Fertility Institute in vitro fertilization lab Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)

A woman in Australia unknowingly gave birth to a stranger’s baby after she received another patient's embryo from her in vitro fertilization clinic due to “human error,” the clinic said.
The mix-up was discovered in February when the clinic in the city of Brisbane found that the birth parents had one too many embryos in storage, said the provider, Monash IVF, in a statement supplied Friday. Staff discovered an embryo from another patient had been mistakenly thawed and transferred to the birth mother, The Associated Press quoted a spokesperson as saying.
Australia news outlets reported the baby was born in 2024.
The company, one of Australia’s biggest IVF providers, said an initial investigation had not uncovered any other such errors. Its statement didn’t identify the patients involved or divulge details about the child's custody.
“All of us at Monash IVF are devastated and we apologize to everyone involved,” said CEO Michael Knaap. “We will continue to support the patients through this extremely distressing time.”
The “human error” was made “despite strict laboratory safety protocols being in place,” the statement said. The company said it had reported the episode to the relevant regulator in the state of Queensland.
Monash IVF opened in 1971 and sees patients in dozens of locations throughout Australia. Last year, the firm settled a class action lawsuit from more than 700 patients, making no admission of liability, after claims its clinics destroyed potentially viable embryos.
The clinic paid a settlement of 56 million Australian dollars ($35 million).
Rare cases of embryo mix-ups have been reported before, including in the United States, Britain, Israel and Europe. A woman in the US state of Georgia in February filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after she gave birth to a stranger’s baby.
Krystena Murray realized the error after the baby's birth because she and her sperm donor were both white and the child was Black. Murray said she wanted to raise the baby but voluntarily gave the 5-month-old to his biological parents after she was told she would not win a legal fight for his custody.
In Australia, each state makes its own laws and rules governing the use of IVF, which advocates say puts patients at risk of error or oversight failings. Queensland’s parliament passed its first laws regulating the sector in 2024.
The measures will establish a registry for all people conceived at a clinic and made the destruction of donors’ medical histories illegal. The change followed an official report that lambasted the storage of frozen sperm donations in Queensland, finding nearly half of samples checked were at medium or high risk of misidentification and recommending thousands be destroyed.
Australia’s states and territories “need to see if their regulations are up to scratch,” the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth told the Today news program Friday.
“Confidence needs to be brought back and it’s imperative that happens.”