European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites spokeswoman Livia Briese said the satellite would "return to its hangar" after technical problems scuppered plans for a launch this week.

"MetOp cannot be launched tonight, nor tomorrow. A new launch date has not yet been fixed but we hope to be able to launch the satellite in the near future," Alain Fournier-Sicre, head of the European Space Agency (ESA) in Russia, told AFP.

"The launcher's booster engines must be checked again," he said.

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 several times due to technical problems.

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 ESA, say 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 cost 2.4 billion euros (three billion dollars). They will work in conjunction with weather satellites operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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