Ariane 5's sky-lighting blastoff

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 22,300 miles above Earth, the satellites lifted off at 2143:52 GMT (5:43:52 p.m. EDT; 6:43:52 p.m. local time) from the Guiana Space Center, a European-run spaceport located on the northeastern shore of South America.

See our Mission Status Center for the latest news on the mission.