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.
A colorful sunset Tuesday created a dramatic backdrop to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket, poised on its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon jungle for its 82nd mission.
A pair of Earth-imaging satellites for the Italian military and a French-Israeli environmental monitoring project lifted off from French Guiana aboard a European Vega rocket at 0158:33 GMT Wednesday (9:58:33 p.m. EDT Tuesday).
The term “direct flight” will go to new heights Friday with a four-hour flight by a Soyuz rocket and its Fregat upper stage to deliver five satellites to three distinct orbital destinations hundreds of miles above Earth.