Ariane 5 Successfully Delivers 2 Satellites Setting New Record

Ariane 5's Lift-off from Kourou spaceport in French Guyana.

Ariane 5’s Lift-off from Kourou spaceport in French Guyana (Credits: ESA)

The first Ariane 5 ECA mission of 2013 successfully delivered the Azerspace/Africasat-1a and Amazonas-3 telecommunication satellites into their planned transfer orbits on February 7.

The mission, designated Flight VA212, was the 212th launch of an Ariane vehicle since the European launcher family entered service in December 1979, and the 54th successful launch in a row for the Ariane 5 launcher since December 2002.

The payload was put in an injection orbit with a perigee of 246.9 km and apogee altitude of 35895 km with an inclination of 6°. Amazonas-3 is the first high power telecom satellite to offer service in Ka-band over South America.  The spacecraft, from its geostationary orbit, will also cover Europe and North America as well as North Africa with telecommunications and broadband connectivity.  Azerspace, also known as Azersat-1 and Africasat-1a, is Azerbaijan’s first satellite in space providing a wide range of telecommunications services, including TV, radio broadcasting and internet for Azerbaijan, Central Asia, Europe (excluding Scandinavia), the Middle East, and Africa.

The total payload mass for the launch was 10,350 kg, including the auxiliary payload adaptors.  Arianespace stated that the flight carried the largest payload to date by an Ariane 5 launch.

Ariane 5 ECA is one of the 2 configurations used for Ariane 5, delivering  mainly telecommunication satellites to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, while Ariane 5 ES is used for ATV in low-Earth orbit.  The next appointment with Ariane 5 is scheduled for April 18, when the 4th Automatic Transfer Vehicle, named after Albert Einstein, will be launched from Kourou spaceport.  On February 8, an ESA team successfully carried out a complete simulation of the ATV-4 mission, launch-to-docking, simulating a large number of failures that can happen during the mission to prepare to promptly react during the real flight.

Below, Ariane 5’s launch carrying Azerspace and Amazonas-3:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn8wSAhk7Sw&w=560&h=315]

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