Tuesday's year-end finale began with an on-time launch at 7:26 p.m. EST and ended about an hour later with the successful separation of the two satellites riding atop the Ariane 5 booster.

Arianespace's customers for this mission included:

• GE Americom's GE-8. Built by Lockheed Martin, the satellite is to provide telecommunications services to the United States with an emphasis on covering remote areas of Alaska.

• Societe Europeenne de Satellites' (SES) Astra 2D. Built by Boeing Satellite Systems, the satellite is to provide direct-to-home television service for the United Kingdom beginning in early 2001. So far four of the 16 transponders available have been sold, officials said Tuesday.

With its powerful set of solid rocket boosters, the Ariane 5 rocket created its usual spectacle of light and sound for residents of Kourou and the nearby city of Cayenne.

Chip Faulkner, a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention who lives in Cayenne, described the view of the launch to SPACE.com:

"We drove down to the beach here in Cayenne to watch the launch. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of cloud cover tonight, so the first few seconds of the lift off was not clearly visible. However, the illumination was still bright, and the sky was lit up like dusk. The reflection off the ocean between Cayenne and Kourou is spectacular. The rocket caught clear sky during the booster separation, so we could see the three glows from the rocket and boosters as they slowly separated and fell away from each other. We stood on the shore and watched until the light from the rocket motor blended into the stars and disappeared from our view. It was then that the thunderous sound arrived to our ears."

Mission managers declared the flight a complete success, although information on the results of a Japanese technology demonstration experiment involving the deployment of a unique satellite reflector dish wasn't immediately available.

"To me it is very symbollic that customers from Europe, the U.S. and Japan are gathered on this flight. It illustrates to the world the international nature of our space efforts," Arianespace chief Jean Marie Luton said Tuesday, noting that the launch "closes down a busy launch year for Arianespace."

Luton said the next Ariane launch is targeted for the first half of January, but he did not say which rocket would be flying or what it would be carrying.

An Ariane 4 rocket is ready to fly from the spaceport but the satellite it was supposed to carry, Eurasiasat 1, had to be removed from the rocket and brought back to a hangar for unexpected additional tests. There has been no word yet on when the satellite will be ready to fly.

Looking ahead to 2001 it is expected that Arianespace will launch about five Ariane 4's and five to six Ariane 5's, depending on the availability of satellites to be launched, according to Arianespace launch commentators speaking Tuesday.