On February 8, 2013 from the Guiana Space Centre of the Space center of the French Guiana located in South America, the first national artificial telecommunication satellite of Azerbaijan of "Azerspace-1" is put to geostationary orbit.  Made by the American company Orbital Sciences, the Azerspace-1 satellite is put to orbit by means of the carrier rocket of the French company "Arianne Space".  Term of operation of the satellite is 15 years.  Its weight is 3 250 kg.  The satellite with transponder of C-band and Ku-band is urged to provide with broadcasting services Azerbaijan, Central Asia, the countries of Europe and Africa.  20% of resources of the satellite will be used by Azerbaijan, and other 80% of opportunities will be used for commercial purposes. Conditional agreements on acquisition of 40% of the Azerspace resources are already concluded.

According to the press release of company “Azermarka” on January 15, 2013 is introduced into post circulation of Azerbaijan a postge block devoted to the start to orbit of the first telecommunication Azerspace-1 satellite. However, actually the first information from "Azermarka" about the edition of the postage block appeared only on February 12 of the current year. Up to this point officials stored sacral silence and issue wasn't announced.
Bearing in mind the failure which has happened to the Belarusian communication satellite "BelKA" when because of unfortunate start of the spacecraft the Belarusian post had to cancel urgently presentation of issue and to withdraw all edition of the printed stamp from sale, the Azerbaijani mail was reinsured and declared the block edition only a month later after its official input in the circulation.
Artist: Khassay Mirzoev
Paper: chalky. Printing: offset.
Perforation: comb. 14
Size of stamps in Block: 40 x 28 mm
Size of Block: 108 x 82 mm.
Edition: 20.000 copies including 50 copies of the imperforated block.

P.S. A sad story about the cancelled issue of the Belarusian stamp "BelKA" website "UkraFil" told in news of January 2 and on February 12, 2012.