Monday night’s blastoff of a Vega rocket from the northern shore of South America dispatched a 2,500-pound Earth imaging satellite for Europe and put on a light show across the tropical spaceport at the edge of the Amazon.
The 98-foot-tall rocket launched at 10:51:58 p.m. local time Monday (0151:58 GMT Tuesday; 9:51:58 p.m. EDT Monday) from the Guiana Space Center. It released the camera-carrying Sentinel 2A environmental satellite into orbit nearly 500 miles above Earth about 55 minutes later.
SpaceX trucked its Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft — refurbished with a new heat shield and structural enhancements — across the Cape Canaveral spaceport this week for attachment to a Falcon 9 rocket ahead of a planned liftoff next Thursday with four astronauts heading to the International Space Station.
A Russian-made Soyuz booster rolled out to its launch pad in French Guiana on Friday, and hydraulic lifts rotated the launcher vertical in preparation for liftoff Tuesday with the first in a new series of French military spy satellites.
Two communications satellites built in California launched Saturday aboard the third Ariane 5 flight of the year after unacceptable upper level winds kept the rocket grounded Friday. The European rocket lifted off from French Guiana at 2138 GMT (5:38 p.m. EDT) with payloads for DISH Network and BRI, a major Indonesian bank.