A powerful Ariane 5 rocket rolled out of its vertical assembly hangar to a tropical launch pad on the shores of South America on Monday, and these photos show the booster on the eve of liftoff.
Arianespace’s launch team loaded an Ariane 5 rocket full of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants Tuesday for a fiery sunset blastoff from French Guiana at 2139 GMT (4:39 p.m. EST) with two European-built television broadcast satellites for Brazil and Indonesia.
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.
Two commercial communications satellites heading for orbits more than 22,000 miles above Earth are scheduled for launch from a jungle launch facility in French Guiana at sunset Tuesday on top of an Ariane 5 rocket.
A European-built communications satellite has arrived at Cape Canaveral for fueling and final launch preparations ahead of a planned late February liftoff aboard a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously-flown first stage booster.
Riding on its side aboard a rail car, a Proton rocket trekked to its launch pad Tuesday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with a Eutelsat television broadcast satellite ready for liftoff Friday.
Flying its most complex mission to date, a Japanese H-2A rocket fired off a launch pad and roared into space from southern Japan on Tuesday, heading for an on-target deployment of the Telstar 12 Vantage communications satellite four-and-a-half hours later.
Boeing Satellite Systems, Airbus Defense and Space and Orbital ATK have won orders from Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES for three new communications spacecraft for launch in 2017.