Photos: Ariane 5 on its jungle launch pad with navigation payloads

Two South Korean Earth-watching satellites will ride Ariane 5 rockets into orbit in 2018 and 2019 after Arianespace beat SpaceX in a competition to launch the spacecraft.

A design flaw in a Russian Fregat upper stage was responsible for the botched orbital injection of two European Galileo navigation satellites in August, causing hydrazine fuel to freeze inside the rocket’s maneuvering system and rendering it unable to point in the right direction during a critical engine burn.

Orbital ATK’s Pegasus XL rocket will take about eight minutes to reach orbit with NASA’s eight CYGNSS weather research microsatellites, then comes deployment of the spacecraft more than 300 miles above Earth.