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 Falcon 9 rocket fired into a late-night sky Friday night over Cape Canaveral with a Dragon supply ship bound for the International Space Station. Eight minutes later, the booster returned to Florida’s Space Coast for SpaceX’s 50th landing of a Falcon first stage.
A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off from Kazakhstan Friday, boosting a three-man crew into orbit for a six-hour flight to the International Space Station.
A month-and-a-half after a general strike in French Guiana halted launch preparations, an Ariane 5 rocket arrived at its launch pad Wednesday on the northeastern coast of South America, a day before hauling two communications satellites into orbit for the Brazilian government and a South Korean company.
