Replay: Atlas 5 launches missile warning satellite

Arianespace and CNES, the French space agency, have released sensational slow-motion video from shielded engineering cameras at the Ariane 5 rocket’s launch pad in French Guiana, showing the launcher’s fiery evening takeoff Feb. 5 with communications satellites for Saudi Arabia and India.

A Russian Soyuz booster arrived at its launch pad on the Kazakh steppe Sunday, the last stop before liftoff Wednesday with a three-person crew bound for the International Space Station.

Look back on last week’s blastoff of an Ariane 5 rocket from the edge of the Amazon jungle in French Guiana carrying four Galileo navigation satellites into orbit.