EVRY, France - The European space consortium Arianespace successfully placed a U.S.-made satellite into orbit Saturday at 5:55 p.m. ET from the Guiana Space Center complex in South America.
GE-4 was originally scheduled for launch this fall by Arianespace's U.S. Competitor, International Launch Services (ILS), on a Russian Proton rocket out of Baikonur Cosmodrome. But when the Proton failed on July 5 during the flight's second stage, the customer, GE Americom, switched to the privately operated Ariane launcher.
After 23 minutes and 18 seconds of errorless ascent and orbital maneuver, the General Electric Corp GE-4 satellite separated from the Ariane 4 rocket. The satellite will begin re-transmission of television signals on December 21.
"Forty-nine consecutive successes is extraordinary. My congratulations to all the people who contributed to this new success," said in Walter Braun, senior vice-president for engineering and spacecraft operations at GE Americom, who was watching the launch in French Guiana.
"This launch campaign was very difficult and very challenging because it was very short," he noted, adding, "When GE Americom needed a launcher last summer, Arianespace answered favorably right away, there is no other launch organization in the world which can provide the same service."
Arianespace was able to achieve the launch in a record time of under three months since the August signing of the contract. Arianespace has now launched five GE satellites, and has three more GE contracts outstanding.
This 8,587-pound (3,903-kilogram) GE-4 is a Lockheed Martin A2100-built satellite. Positioned at 101 degrees West over the Galapagos Islands, it will provide TV broadcast coverage to cable networks serving the United States (including Hawaii and Alaska), Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
This 122nd Ariane launch is the seventh successful mission for the Ariane 4 rocket in 1999, and the fifth since launch activity resumed August following a multi-month standdown due to customer problems in the manufacture of satellites that Arianespace rockets boost into orbit. Its also marks the 49th consecutive successful launch of an Ariane 4 rocket.
Before year's end, Arianespace plans three more launches, including the first commercial flight of the Ariane 5 model on December 10. The new model took the European Space Agency 12-plus years and $9 billion to develop. If this record pace is successful, with eight launches in four and a half months, the French Guiana Space Center complex will set a new record as the world's busiest commercial satellite launch site.
Arianespace's current launch backlog of 43 satellites represents more than $3.3 billion in business. Eight of these payloads will be U.S. commercial satellites.
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