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

Europe’s Sentinel 2A land imaging satellite designed to glimpse cities, farms and forests from orbit launched aboard a Vega rocket. The 2,500-pound satellite lifted off at 0151:58 GMT Tuesday (9:51:58 p.m. EDT Monday).

The next flight of Europe’s heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket, set for July 28 from French Guiana, will carry a record payload of three multi-ton satellites toward geostationary orbit, including a pair of U.S.-built commercial communications payloads and Northrop Grumman’s second robotic satellite servicing spacecraft.

Two days after launch from Kazakhstan, a Russian Soyuz ferry ship glided to a smooth docking with the International Space Station Saturday, bringing a veteran cosmonaut, a Frenchman making his first flight and NASA’s most experienced female astronaut to the lab complex.