Tag: Arianespace
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Photos: Soyuz booster rolls out to French Guiana launch pad
Russian rocket technicians working in the French Guiana jungle transported a three-stage Soyuz booster to its launch pad Monday and erected it upright for liftoff Thursday with four communications satellites for O3b Networks, a company with aims to beam broadband Internet service to the developing world. The rocket rolled to the launch pad from a…
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Live coverage: Ariane 5 blasts off on commercial flight
Live coverage of the countdown and launch of an Ariane 5 rocket with the DirecTV 14 and GSAT 16 communications satellites. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
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Ariane 5 sends up satellites for DirecTV, India
Two communications satellites rode an Ariane 5 rocket into space Saturday — one to beam down ultra-sharp television programming into millions of American homes and another craft to give Indian citizens expanded access to information technology. The dual-payload blastoff occurred at 3:40 p.m. EST (2040 GMT; 5:40 p.m. local time) from the Ariane 5’s ELA-3…
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Ariane 5 rocket to boost satellites for Latin America
The Ariane 5 rocket sits on the ELA-3 launch pad Wednesday evening. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSG – P. Piron Two telecommunications satellite for Latin America are counting down to liftoff Thursday aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. The powerful 18-story launcher is set to ignite its hydrogen-fueled Vulcain 2 main…
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Two satellites for Latin America launched by Ariane 5
The Ariane 5 rocket sits on the ELA-3 launch pad Wednesday evening. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin An Ariane 5 launcher fired into space Thursday from French Guiana, hauling two commercial satellites destined to broadcast television to Latin America for Intelsat, DirecTV and Argentina’s national telecom company. Heading for orbits…
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Galileo launch failure blamed on frozen Fregat fuel line
Artist’s concept of a Fregat upper stage during launch with two Galileo navigation satellites. Photo credit: Arianespace TV/Spaceflight Now A design flaw in a Russian Fregat upper stage was responsible for the botched orbital injection of two European Galileo navigation satellites in August, officials said Wednesday, causing hydrazine fuel to freeze inside the rocket’s maneuvering…
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Arianespace Soyuz ST-B in troubling Galileo launch
An Arianespace Soyuz ST-B launched two Galileo satellites from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on Friday. However, the lofting of the two FOC-M1 (FM01 and FM02) satellites – which took place at 12:27 UTC – did not result in a correct orbital injection. Controllers are now looking into their options to save the satellites. Galileo…
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Arianespace Soyuz ST-A launches Sentinel-1A mission
Arianespace launched a Soyuz ST-A rocket on a mission to loft the Sentinel-1A mission into orbit from the European Spaceport “Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG)” in Kourou, French Guiana. Launch of the Earth observation satellite – that will deliver essential data for Europe’s Copernicus program from a Sun-synchronous orbit – was on schedule at 6:02 pm local…
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Soyuz ST-B successfully launches Gaia space observatory
An Arianespace Soyuz ST-B rocket successfully launched the impressive Gaia space observatory from the Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana on Thursday. The launch – occurring on schedule at 9:12 am UTC – marks the beginning of an ambitious project to map a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The Spacecraft: The Gaia spacecraft is…
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NASA looks to Kourou for SLS ground ops streamlining ideas
As development of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket continues, NASA is looking to its international partners for inspiration and lessons learned. Specifically, the agency sent a team to Kourou, French Guiana, to observe and report on the processes and ground operations employed by the European Space Agency for the Ariane V, with an eye…