Cape Town — SA is expected to launch its first space satellite later today from Kazakhstan -- almost three years later than first planned.

The launch of the SumbandilaSat is significant because it will be the first South African-owned satellite to collect images for the government, with applications ranging from crop monitoring to town planning.

Politics and technical issues repeatedly held back the launch of the SumbandilaSat, which was originally supposed to be launched from a Russian submarine from the Barents Sea in December 2006.

It was to go into orbit over California, but US concerns about launching the satellite from a Russian rocket over US territory torpedoed the plans. SA was forced to renegotiate with Russia to find an alternative launch site and date, and then got involved in a tit-for-tat row that caused further delays: the Department of Defence refused to launch a Russian satellite, and Russia in turn refused to launch the SumbandilaSat. Russia's space agency Roskosmos eventually agreed to launch the satellite on a Soyuz rocket that was to launch a Russian weather satellite called Meteor from the Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Meteor's launch was held up several times by the Russians for technical reasons, but is now set to go ahead this evening.

"It's very unfortunate. I should think we'd think twice about using Russia as the launching country (again)," Deputy Science Minister Derek Hanekom said . SA has an agreement with Russia that includes space science.

The 81kg satellite was commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology from the Stellenbosch company SunSpace & Information Systems. The R26m project is intended to provide SA with access to space technology.