First Soyuz launch from French Guiana delayed

Arianespace said in a statement the postponement was due to an anomaly detected during the fuelling of the Soyuz launcher.

European space officials told Reuters the launch would go ahead a day late, on Friday, and Arianespace was due to give more details at a news conference later in the day.

"We were told that the launcher team decided to delay the launch," European Space Agency spokesman Roberto Lo Verde said.

Soyuz first flew in 1966 and traces its roots back to the earliest Cold War intercontinental ballistic missiles.

This week's planned launch from Europe's space base near Kourou, French Guiana, in South America, will be the first time it is launched from outside its former Soviet bases.

The planned flight is the culmination of more than a decade of planning, negotiations, delays and construction that aims to gives Europe a full range of satellite launchers and at the same time inject cash into Russia's space programme.

Once fully operational later this decade, Galileo should give Europeans autonomy from the U.S.-controlled Global Positioning System. Russia says it completed its own similar system earlier this month.

Arianespace is principally owned by the French Space Agency (CNES), which has 34 percent, and Astrium, a wholly owned subsidiary of European aerospace giant EADS, which holds 30 percent.

(Reporting by Benoit Tessier and Francesco Guarascio in Kourou; Editing by Andrew Heavens)