Ariane 5 Launches Four Satellites in Orbit

Thursday evening, the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched another one of its Ariane 5 vehicles, which this time delivered four satellites into the geosynchronous orbit around Earth. At around 2209 GMT (5:09 pm EST), the booster took off from its French Guyana launch base, in South America, and managed to complete its half-hour ascent with no glitches, thus scoring yet another successful mission in a 6 year-long row.

The first satellite to be deployed was Hot Bird 10, whose main purpose was to provide direct-to-home television for people in the Middle East. The next to be launched was NSS 9, a telecommunications satellite, designed to better cover the Pacific in region, which has been serviced by too few relays until now. Two microsats were later deployed. They belonged to the French military, and were designed to offer early missile launch warning.

“I'm absolutely delighted to be able to share with you this new success. This success goes to show that Ariane 5 ECA, which is a combination of power and dependability, is capable of 29 successful launches in a row,” the chairman and CEO of Arianespace, Jean-Yves Le Gall, says. “Hot Bird 10 is being launched well before the start of its commercial mission at 13 degrees East, and that's why we decided that in the meantime it will contribute to our expansion into immerging orbital slots for television distribution,” the satellite's mission director, Raphael Mussalian, adds.

Hot Bird 10 will soon be placed on stand-by in orbit, until its operator, Eutelsat, will find a way of retiring Atlantic Bird 4, the previous satellite that offered television to the Middle East, which has been doing its job for the past decade. Together with Hot Bird 8 and 9, the new addition to the network will contribute to bringing 1,100 television channels and 600 radio stations to approximately 120 million homes in the region.

The SPIRALE A and SPIRALE B microsats, belonging to the French, will orbit Earth in hopes of identifying the burning stage of missile launches, thus providing early warning to the Europeans. “With the early warning system, France is taking a major step forward enabling it to assess, as a sovereign state, the nature and reality of ballistic threats and possible attacks,” French Defense Procurement Agency representative Patrick Auroy concludes.