Liftoff came at the opening of the launch window -- 5:51 p.m. EST (22:51 GMT) -- with the Ariane 5's two solid rocket boosters and single Vulcain first stage main engine blasting a fiery plume over the Guiana Space Center near Kourou, French Guiana.

As usual, the quiet night sky over the Atlantic Ocean beaches was interrupted with a compelling spectacle as the rocket carried the EUROBIRD and BSAT-2A satellites into separate orbits 22,300 miles (35,897 kilometers) above Earth's equator.

"It was almost a shock the way it lit up the area when it took off," said Charlie Williamson, marketing manager for Orbital Sciences Corp., the company that built the BSAT-2A satellite. "We were lucky with this clear night, it was just gorgeous watching it go across the sky."

The 37-minute-long mission ended with the two satellites on their way to geosynchronous orbit.

In such an orbit a satellite circles Earth at the same speed as the planet rotates. So from the perspective of the ground the satellite appears to remain in a single place -- a feature that allows receiving dishes on the ground to point at the satellite and never have to be moved.

Moreover, it's a feature that allows satellite companies to offer, among other digital telecommunications services, direct broadcast television programming.

For EUTELSAT, the operators of EUROBIRD, the principal source of customers for this spacecraft will be in the British Isles, but various telecommunication services also will be available throughout Europe and portions of Asia and Africa.

To help handle this growing customer base, another EUTELSAT spacecraft built by Alcatel Space is to be launched by Arianespace at the end of June or in early July, said Giuliano Berretta, director general of EUTELSAT, who in his post-launch comments thanked Arianespace for a good mission on the international day in which women are celebrated.

"Ariane is also a beautiful woman and she accompanies us with our beautiful spacecraft," Berretta said.

"What a wonderful evening it was," added Takehiro Izumi, president of Broadcasting Satellite System Corporation, the owner and operator of BSAT-2A.

The company has two satellites in orbit now serving 15 million households, Izumi said. After BSAT-2A becomes operational at the end of April, the company will concentrate on its share of the direct television broadcast market in Japan, growing its number of customers from two million right now to 10 million within three years.

Meanwhile, the French Guiana launch pads will be quiet for the next couple of months as Arianespace waits for its satellite customers to become ready for launch. The next mission isn't expected until early June when an Ariane 4 is to carry the Intelsat 901 satellite into orbit, officials said.

But Luton said the spaceport itself will remain busy, activity highlighted by the inaugural use of a new satellite processing facility that will be able to accommodate the largest satellites now on the drawing boards and offer satellite operators one-stop shopping for all pre-launch tests.

Arianespace officials remain confident that despite this brief hiatus in launches the company still will launch at least four more Ariane 5's this year and three more Ariane 4's.

So far the company has been on a brisk pace, sending three Ariane rockets into space during the first three months. Arianespace's first launch of the year was on Jan. 10 when an Ariane 4 carried Eurasiasat 1 - also known as Turksat 2A - into orbit.

Then on Feb. 7 an Ariane 4 carried a pair of military communication satellites into orbit.