Live coverage: Vega rocket launches with LISA Pathfinder

These photos and a time lapse video from the European Space Agency chronicle the final preparations for launch of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUICE, spacecraft from the Guiana Space Center on the second-to-last Ariane 5 rocket.

SES has selected Arianespace to launch a communications satellite ordered as part of a three-spacecraft procurement announced last month, after assigning the other two payloads for launches aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

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.