Category: Arianespace

  • Arianespace successfully launches BepiColumbo

    Arianespace successfully launched the European Space Agency (ESA) & Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) BepiColumbo spacecraft toward Mercury. The mission comprises two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). This is the first European spacecraft to head to Mercury and will spend 7+ years traveling to the planet before entering…

  • Arianespace launches four Galileo satellites

    In the first of two launches today Arianespace successfully delivered four Galileo satellites to add to the constellation already orbiting the Earth. There were a lot of lasts for this mission as shown below Many Lasts for this launch #VA244: 1. Last Ariane 5 ES model 2. Last Medium fairing 3. Last EPS upper stage…

  • Further delays to JWST

    This week NASA announced further delays to the James Webb Space Telescope which was originally supposed to launch this year and has now been delayed to Now Earlier Than (NET) 2021. The delays which have been caused by several factors from human error during construction/testing, design complexity and basically poor management of the project are…

  • Arianespace SES 14/Al Yah 3 launch update

    It now appears that the launch this evening was at least partially successful as announced by Arianespace, however, at present, we don’t know for certain if the satellites were deployed to the correct orbits or not. Arianespace confirms the SES 14 and Al Yah 3 communications satellites are in contact with their ground teams after…

  • Arianespace SES 14/Al Yah 3 launch appears to have failed

    Today’s Ariane 5 launch of the SES 14 and Al Yah 3 satellites appears to have failed sometime after the first stage separation. The launch lifted off at 5:20 pm EST and appeared to be going smoothly with the successful booster separation, payload fairing separation, and first stage engine burnout. However, telemetry from the spacecraft…