Live coverage: Two satellites lift off aboard Ariane 5

An Ariane 5 rocket fired off a launch pad in French Guiana Tuesday with nearly 3 million pounds of thundering thrust, heading to orbit with India’s heaviest satellite designed to expand broadband coverage across the South Asian nation, and a South Korean weather satellite carrying an U.S.-built imager to track storms and cyclones across the Asia-Pacific.

After the threat of lightning kept the mission on the ground Thursday, Arianespace and the European Space Agency successfully launched an Ariane 5 rocket Friday from Kourou, French Guiana, with the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, a robotic spacecraft embarking on an eight-year journey to the solar system’s largest planet. Liftoff with ESA’s JUICE spacecraft occurred at 8:14 a.m. EDT (1214 UTC).

Europe’s venerable Ariane 5 rocket blasted off on its 117th and final flight Wednesday, successfully boosting two communications satellites into orbit but leaving the European space program without a large satellite launcher of its own until a delayed successor comes on line.