CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Arianespace launched its final Ariane 4 rocket early Saturday, ending a 15-year run of the workhorse lifter that allowed the company to become dominant in the world's commercial space marketplace.
The 116th Ariane 4 launch lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in South America at 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) Saturday on a mission that was delayed three days because of strong upper-level winds.
Riding atop the three-stage booster was the Intelsat 907 spacecraft, a communications satellite built by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, Calif., for Intelsat, Ltd.
The new satellite will join the company's current constellation of orbiting spacecraft and provide Internet, telephony, television and business network transmission services for North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa.
Intelsat 907 eventually will be positioned at 332.5 degrees East longitude and is the sixth in this 900-series that was carried into orbit by Arianespace. Intelsat 903 was lofted by an International Launch Services Proton rocket.
Spacecraft separation took place 21 minutes after launch, concluding the Ariane 4's history on a successful note.
"The Ariane 4 has been an excellent launch vehicle and we're proud of its heritage and what it has established for the Ariane family of vehicles going all the way back to Ariane 1," said Clayton Mowry, president of Arianespace, Inc., the company that markets Ariane rockets in the U.S.First launched in June 1988, the inaugural Ariane 4 flew three months before shuttle Discovery lifted off on the first mission following the 1986 Challenger disaster.
At that time the U.S. aerospace industry was just beginning to establish its own commercial launch operations with the Delta, Atlas and even Titan rockets -- the result of a new U.S. policy that forbid commercial satellite launches on the shuttle.
Ahead of the game by a wide margin, Arianespace became the world leader in commercial launch operations and held that distinction for many years.
The number of commercial launch firms and available rockets now far exceeds the demand for launches and Arianespace finds itself competing for every possible shot.
The decision in 2000 to retire the Ariane 4 family of rockets was driven by the marketplace, Mowry said.
As satellites grew in size, the company looked for more powerful and less costly ways to launch and came up with the Ariane 5. The company flew both rockets as a way to phase out one operation while gaining experience with a new vehicle.
"It's not a sad day, but obviously the Ariane 4 was the workhorse vehicle for many years," Mowry said. "It's part of our family and when you do these kinds of things, there's technical and engineering reputations that you develop that stays with the company and the new family of vehicles."
That reputation is being tested right now thanks to the December 2002 failure of a new version of the Ariane 5 rocket.
The subsequent hold in Ariane 5 launches and the lack, now, of any Ariane 4 boosters is forcing Arianespace to work with their satellite customers to reschedule missions. The high-profile Rosetta science mission to visit a comet already is a victim of the delays.
Saturday's successful launch used the most powerful version of the Ariane 4 rocket with four liquid-fueled boosters strapped to the vehicle's first stage.
Overall it was the 40th launch to use this Ariane 44L configuration, the 116th launch in the Ariane 4 family and the 158th Ariane launch.
Ariane 4 launched from the ELA-2 pad, which now will be put into a caretaker status and await future use.
Company officials said the launch pad itself likely will be used by the new Vega rocket, but not for the Russian Soyuz rocket. If officials approve that idea, the Soyuz would fly from a new pad built for that use.
Meanwhile, the assembly building used for Ariane 4 could find itself the home for processing the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).
The ATV is a European Space Agency contribution to the International Space Station program and is essentially an unmanned freighter similar in purpose to the Russian's Progress spacecraft.
ATV's will be used to resupply the space station beginning as early as 2004.
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