Revisit some of the mighty, soon-to-be-retired European rocket's most memorable liftoffs.
. VA261 will loft an experimental communications satellite called Heinrich Hertz for the German space agency and Syracuse 4b, a French communications satellite.
While a couple of communication satellites may not make front-page news, the Ariane 5 has had some extremely notable launches during its run. So, as we prepare to bid the final Ariane 510, 9, and 8 — Galileo navigation-satellite launchesis the backbone of Europe's satellite-navigation capabilities. Its utility to European citizens and governments is intertwined with numerous aspects of everyday life and is crucial to the continent's defense and infrastructure.
Twelve of the 24 currently operable Galileo satellites were launched on Ariane 5 rockets, which are able to loft four of the hefty spacecraft to orbit at a time — a significant increase over the constellation's previous cadence of two-per-launch aboard Russian-built Soyuz rockets. Ariane 5's three Galileo missions launched in November 2016, December 2017 and July 2018. ESA's first Automated Transfer Vehicle , the Jules Verne, launched atop an Ariane 5 on March 8, 2008.
At the time, the collective 20-ton mass of the ATV Jules Verne was more than double the maximum weight ever launched by an Ariane 5 rocket. To accommodate this heavy load, the launch vehicle and its infrastructure underwent a set of upgrades, including theFive ATV spacecraft visited the ISS between 2008 and 2015, when the cargo-ship program came to an end. All five launched aboard the Ariane 5.
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