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.
Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSG – S. MartinPhoto credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSGPhoto credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSG – JM GuillonPhoto credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Optique Video du CSG – JM GuillonPhoto credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015Photo credit: ESA–M. Pedoussaut, 2015
A European-built orbiter designed to seek out the source of methane on Mars slipped into orbit around the red planet Wednesday after a seven-month interplanetary journey, but mission control lost contact with an experimental landing probe just before touchdown.
The first Ariane 5 launch since a mission flew off course Jan. 25, deploying two communications satellites into an off-target orbit, is underway. Liftoff with the DSN 1/Superbird 8 and Hylas 4 communications satellites occurred on time at 2134 GMT (5:34 p.m. EDT).
Two Galileo navigation satellites arrived at the Guiana Space Center in South America on Thursday after a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris, as European officials plan the resumption of Galileo launches after a rocket mishap deposited two spacecraft in the wrong orbit last year.
