Thursday 2 August 2012 marked the 50th successful Ariane flight in a row: an Ariane 5 was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to perform a dual deployment of two telecommunications satellites, Intelsat 20 and Hylas-2, into their planned transfer orbits.
Lift off of flight VA208 took place at 22:54 CEST; 17:54 French Guiana time. This was Ariane 5’s fourth launch of 2012, continuing a line of launch successes unbroken since 2003.
On 24 December 1979, Ariane made its first flight from French Guiana, marking the beginning of 30 years of success and giving Europe a guaranteed independent access to space. With Ariane, ESA could develop its own programmes in many different domains: telecommunications, Earth observation, science and exploration. Europe was the pioneer in the civil launch space market, with the creation of Arianespace, the world-leading space transportation company.
Building Costs are being kept to a minimum by using advanced low-cost technologies and existing production facilities used for Ariane launchers, making access to space easier, quicker and cheaper.
Global communications underpin modern society and represent an important commercial sector. Satellites are a fundamental part of global telecommunications networks, providing all kind of services, efficiently and seamlessly, over almost every region of our planet.