On June 21 at 21:50 UTC, Arianespace launched an Ariane 5 from the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana. This was their second launch of the year overall and their first Ariane 5 launch of the year.

Normally, we would show a video of the launch, but there wasn’t any clean footage available that we could find by the time we had to freeze the script for the show. We do, however, have a nice photo taken by one of the Arianespace photographers covering the launch.

Known as VA257, this was the fifth-to-last Ariane 5 to go up and carried its standard complement of two communications satellites to geostationary transfer orbit. One of them, MEASAT-3d, is for the Indonesian company MEASAT and will provide Internet and other services to the nation. In addition to serving Indonesia, the satellite also hosts a small payload for the South Korean company KTSAT, which will be used to provide more precise navigation signals for aircraft.

The second, and smaller, satellite (Ariane 5 generally launches one large and one small satellite) was another communication satellite, GSAT-24. Owned by the Indian government through its company NSIL or New Space India Limited, its capability in Ku-band will be leased to private companies in India to provide broadcasting and communications services.

Both satellites plus the dual launch adapter weighed 10,863 kilograms. The four remaining Ariane 5 launches will consist of three more pairs of commercial satellites. Ariane 5 will go out on a high note with ESA’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, or JUICE, the first large-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program, which is set to launch sometime in 2023.

More information

PDF: VA257 launch kit (Arianespace)

KASS in operation. What do we expect from it? (GNSS Asia)