On Monday, December 13, 2021, at 12:07 UTC a Proton-M rocket with the Briz-M upper stage and Ekspress-AMU3 and Ekspress-AMU7 spacecraft launched successfully from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The spacecraft manufactured by Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems (part of Roscosmos). All stages of the flight (separation of the stages and payload fairing jettison) went nominally.

582 seconds after liftoff the main block (upper stage and two spacecraft) separated nominally from the launch vehicle third stage. Proton-M rockets use a standard trajectory with dedicated drop zones for the stages. This route provides 51.55° inclination of the reference orbit.

Further injection of the spacecraft into the target orbit with a minimum altitude of 18.7 thousand kilometers and a maximum altitude of 52.8 thousand kilometers will be provided by the five burns of the Briz-M upper stage thruster. Total launch time from liftoff to separation of the first Express AMU7 spacecraft will be 17 hours 50 minutes, for the second Express AMU3 - 18 hours 7 minutes.

Proton-M launch vehicle and Briz-M upper stage are developed and serially produced by the Khrunichev Center. Since 1965, there have been 425 launches of various Proton rocket modifications. The use of Briz-M upper stage as part of Proton-M rocket allows increasing the payload, launched in geostationary orbit up to 3.5 tons, and in transition orbit to more than 6 tons. The first launch of the Proton-M/Briz-M complex took place on April 7, 2001.

Express-AMU3 and Express-AMU7 spacecraft are designed to provide a wide range of communications and broadcasting services in the Russian Federation, fixed and mobile communications, television and radio broadcasting services, broadband high-speed access to information resources and other applications.