A commercial satellite to broadcast television programming to millions of homes in Brazil and a multipurpose communications craft to beam high-definition video and Internet signals across Indonesia are awaiting a half-hour ride into orbit on an Ariane 5 rocket Tuesday.
Standing nearly 180 feet (55 meters) tall, the Ariane 5 is scheduled to lift off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 2139 GMT (4:39 p.m. EST; 6:39 p.m. French Guiana time) Tuesday. The launch will mark the 91st Ariane 5 flight since 1996, and the launcher’s first mission this year.
The Sky Brasil 1 satellite, built by Airbus Defense and Space and weighing more than 13,000 pounds (6 metric tons) at launch, is the heavier of the two spacecraft aboard the Ariane 5 rocket. Telkom 3S, manufactured by Thales Alenia Space, weighs 7,826 pounds (3,550 kilograms) with its propellant tanks full.
The rocket will target an orbit ranging from 155 miles (250 kilometers) to 22,205 miles (35,736 kilometers), with a tilt of 4 degrees to the equator.
A Proton rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the EchoStar 21 communications satellite Thursday, the heaviest commercial payload ever flown aboard a Russian booster.
After scrubbing a launch attempt Friday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket Saturday on a mission to send communications satellites from OneWeb and Iridium into polar orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Liftoff occurred at 6:16 a.m. PDT (9:16 a.m. EDT; 1316 UTC).
The first launch from Cape Canaveral this year placed into orbit an Indonesian communications satellite, a privately-funded Israeli moon lander, and an experimental space surveillance microsatellite for the U.S. Air Force.