![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-10.06.27.png\")
<\/p>\nThe second Ariane 5 mission of the year lifted off from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, in South America on a rideshare mission that launched the GEO-KOMPSAT-2B and JCSAT-17 satellites for South Korea and Japan, respectively.<\/p>\n
The launch occurred at the opening of a 62 minute launch window at 22:18 UTC.<\/p>\n
The rocket: <\/b><\/p>\n
The heavy lift champion of the European rocket family, Ariane 5 is the current iteration of the Ariane rocket and has been flying since 1996 with 106 missions (not counting this one) to its credit.<\/p>\n
Unique among the rocket world, Ariane 5\u2019s launch countdown actually reaches zero before its liquid fueled core stage engine, Vulcain 2, is ignited on the pad for 6.3 seconds of time to ramp up to full thrust and undergo health checkouts.<\/p>\n
Once the on-board flight computers confirm the health of the Vulcain 2 engine, the commands are sent to light the two massive solid rocket boosters flanking the core stage, permitting liftoff underneath 13,000 kN (2,922,516 lbf) of thrust from the boosters and Vulcain 2 engine.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Ariane 5 configuration for this mission. (Credit: Arianespace)<\/p>\n
After clearing the lightning protection towers, Ariane 5 will perform a pitch in a roll manoeuvre to place itself onto the correct azimuth \u2014 or trajectory \u2014 for a flight to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) inclined 6\u00b0 to the equator.<\/p>\n
Ariane 5 is quite suited to these rideshare missions to GTO, with a launch site positioned within 3\u00b0 of the equator allowing the rocket to maximise its own performance while utilising the most launch help given by Earth\u2019s rotation due to the close proximity of the Guiana Space Center to the equator.<\/p>\n
The solid rockets propelled Ariane 5 through the dense lower atmosphere before the rocket\u2019s flight systems began to pitch the vehicle over in an effort to gain much more horizontal acceleration than vertical acceleration \u2014 exactly what was needed to obtain orbit.<\/p>\n
After 2 minutes 21 seconds, the solid rockets burned out and jettisoned, leaving the core stage\u2019s single Vulcain 2 to engine to continue taking the stack onward toward its orbital insertion point.<\/p>\n
In total, the Vulcain 2 engine burned for 8 minutes 39 seconds before depleting its liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel reserves and shutting down. <\/p>\n
Core stage separation then occurred, followed shortly thereafter by ignition of the single engine ECS-D (Etage Sup\u00e9rieur Cryog\u00e9nique-D) upper stage.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Screen-Shot-2020-02-18-at-10.02.26.png\")
<\/p>\n
The mission timeline from T0 to GEO-KOMPSAT-2B deployment. (Credit: Arianespace)<\/p>\n
This upper stage burned continuously for nearly 16 minutes 26 seconds, resulting in a total near-continuous burn time of the Ariane 5 rocket for 25 minutes 24 seconds to insert its two passengers into GTO.<\/p>\n
This 25 minute burn is also unique among launchers going to GTO, differing in the major way that almost every other rocket burns first into a parking orbit and then coasts before initiating its upper stage engine again for the injection to GTO.<\/p>\n
Ariane 5 does it all in a single upper stage burn.<\/p>\n
At ECS-D upper stage engine cutoff, Ariane 5\u2019s passengers were in a 250 x 35,786 km orbit inclined 6\u00b0 to the equator.<\/p>\n
The first passenger to separate was JCSAT-17 from SKY Perfect JCSAT Corporation of Japan.<\/p>\n
JCSAT-17:<\/b><\/p>\n
Riding in the upper passenger position on this launch, JCSAT-17 is the latest in a series of telecommunication satellites for SKY Perfect JCSAT Corporation.<\/p>\n
Built by Lockheed Martin Space, the telecommunications satellite will be placed in the 136\u00b0 East Geostationary orbit location, permitting full visibility and coverage range across the Japanese archipelago.<\/p>\n
With a launch mass of 5,857 kg, the satellite is a liquid bipropellant vehicle capable of communicating in the S-, C-, and Ku- band ranges of the communication spectrum.<\/p>\n