"The launch was put off because of a (technical) failure," the space agency said. No new date was given.

"The rocket did not take off, we don't know why. It stopped in the last minutes before firing," Alain Fournier-Sicre of the European Space Agency (ESA) told AFP by telephone.

The launch had been delayed Tuesday because of "a problem with a booster".

The satellite, MetOp-A, was to have been put in orbit on Monday from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz-ST Fregat rocket, but the operation was postponed because of a hitch with the rocket's inertial navigation system.

The four-tonne satellite is the most complex of its kind, carrying around a dozen instruments for measuring weather patterns and transmitting back data.

The project's backers, which include the European Space Agency, say that this and two more satellites to be launched in coming years will provide higher quality data to improve weather forecasting and climate monitoring.

The three satellites are costed at 2.4 billion euros (three billion dollars). They will work in conjunction with weather satellites operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

All rights reserved. copyright 2018 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.