Ariane 5

A powerful Eutelsat commercial communications satellite launched Wednesday aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, heading into orbit on a mission expected to last more than 15 years to provide broadband connectivity to rural households, ships, and airplane passengers across Europe.

An Ariane 5 rocket launched at 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT) Wednesday from Kourou, French Guiana, with a powerhouse European broadband satellite owned by Eutelsat and built by Thales Alenia Space. The Eutelsat Konnect VHTS satellite will beam internet connectivity across Europe for fixed broadband consumers and in-flight WiFi.

An Ariane 5 rocket is set to blast off Wednesday from French Guiana — a day later than planned due to a poor weather forecast Tuesday — with a Eutelsat-owned satellite designed to beam broadband internet signals across Europe from a position in geostationary orbit.

Two multi-ton geostationary communications satellites for Malaysian and Indian operators launched on a European heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket Wednesday from French Guiana, leaving four Ariane 5s left to fly before retirement.

A European Ariane 5 rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 5:50 p.m. EDT (2150 GMT) Wednesday with the Malaysian MEASAT 3d communications satellite and India’s GSAT 24 television broadcast spacecraft. This mission marked the Ariane 5 flight in six months.

Two geostationary communications satellites for India’s space agency and a Malaysian company will rocket into orbit from the jungle of South America on Wednesday on a European-built Ariane 5 launcher.

The James Webb Space Telescope fired its rocket thrusters for the first time late Saturday to line up for course toward an observing post nearly a million miles from Earth, then deployed a high-rate communications antenna Sunday to transmit science data to the ground.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a NASA-led international collaboration that took nearly 30 years and $10 billion to get to the launch pad, finally left Earth with a Christmas morning rocket ride from a European spaceport in South America, setting off on a mission to hunt for the first light in the universe. That was just the easy part.

An Ariane 5 rocket has lifted off from French Guiana on a mission to send the James Webb Space Telescope toward a point a million miles from Earth. The powerful European rocket blasted off at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT).

If you want to see the faint, stretched-out light from the first stars and galaxies that began shining at the end of the cosmic dark ages a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, you’re going to need a big telescope. But not just any big telescope.