A Russian Soyuz rocket was launched from the European Space Agency base in French Guiana Saturday, carrying six military satellites into orbit.
The Soyuz rocket launched Friday, carrying satellites from European defense agencies and Chilean security authorities, said officials with Russia’s space agency.
It was to first release a French Earth observation satellite, Pleiades 1. Next to come would be four French micro-satellites and a Chilean Earth observation satellite was to be released last. The satellites will provide military and civilian customers with increased mapping abilities, while the four smaller satellites will be used to gather electronic intelligence for the military. The satellite is designed to take pictures that resolve features on the ground as small as 20 inches across.
The launch of the Soyuz rocket comes as NASA announced earlier this year that it would retire the shuttle fleet. The U.S. has looked to Russia in its ability to keep a number of space operations running, including supplying the International Space Station.
Liftoff of the 151-foot-tall Soyuz launcher was at 09:03:48 p.m. EST from the Guiana Space Center on the northeast coast of South America. Lighting up the night sky with brilliant orange flame, the kerosene-fueled rocket dodged scattered clouds and flew north away from the French Guiana spaceport.
The rocket’s core stages finished their job in less than 9 minutes, then a Fregat space tug guided the Pleiades and ELISA payloads to an orbit nearly 435 miles above Earth.
The 2,138-pound Pleiades 1 satellite and four 265-pound ELISA spacecraft were deployed from the Fregat upper stage about one hour after launch.
Two more brief firings of the Fregat main engine adjusted its altitude to 379 miles for the release of SSOT, a French-built imaging satellite for Chile’s government.
It was the second launch of a Soyuz booster from French Guiana using a new $800 million facility situated eight miles northwest of the spaceport’s existing Ariane rocket launch zone. Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport due to its proximity to the equator, and that launches are in a favourable direction over water.
“As you have just seen, the second launch of Soyuz from [French Guiana], which came less than two months after the first, has just put into orbit six spacecraft for our customers at the end of one of the most complex missions ever carried out,” said Jean-Yves Le Gall, chairman and CEO of Arianespace.
Throughout history, more than 1,500 launches have been made with Soyuz launchers to orbit satellites for telecommunications, Earth observation, weather and scientific missions, as well as for human flights.
A Soyuz rocket first launched from Arianespace’s complex in French Guiana in late October, carrying the first two satellites of the European Union’s Galileo navigation system. It was the maiden voyage of the Russian rocket outside the former Soviet Union.
It is the second attempted launch of the Syouz by Russia since a similar Soyuz craft crashed back in August. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has threatened to dole out strict punishments to officials responsible for a string of recent failures in the country’s space program. The Kremlin has threatened disciplinary action, heavy fines or even criminal penalties for the country’s recent space woes, which have included a series of rocket crashes and lost spacecraft over the past 11 months
