• The 112th launch of Ariane celebrates symbolically the 20th anniversary of the Ariane line of rockets, whose first model was successfully launched December 24, 1979.

• To make up for costly delays that left its French Guiana launch pads idle from February through August, Arianespace successfully packed eight launches into the last four and a half months of 1999, three of them accomplished in 18 days in December.

This will also be the 51st launch success in a row for the French-lead consortium Arianespace. It follows on the heels of Flight 124 on December 3, and Flight 504 -- the first commercial launch of the heavy-lift Ariane 5, on December 10. Galaxy 11's ride on Flight 125 is the tenth launch from Kourou this year.

After just 24 minutes of errorless ascent and orbital maneuver, the 9,886 pounds PanAmSat Galaxy 11 separated from the Ariane 4 rocket upper stage over Indonesia.

"It was a fantastic achievement to be able to launch three Ariane rockets in 19 days, not everybody thought that this challenge could be met."

The satellite will begin re-transmission of television signals in two months.

This U.S. satellite built by Hughes Space & Communications will stay into an initial geostationary transfer orbit over the Galapagos Islands to provide enhanced television and cable TV distribution, telephone and internet services to North America and Brazil for at least 15 years.

"It was a fantastic achievement to be able to launch three Ariane rockets in 19 days, not everybody thought that this challenge could be met," said Jacques Rossignol, chief operating officer of Arianespace at the Guiana space center, in French Guiana. "Id like to thank everybody who made this goal a reality. To satisfy [our] long-term partners and faithful company PanAmSat, for which we have launched 15 satellites, we prepared a perfect gift for Christmas. And we decided that its not enough. So we are preparing a New Year gift because we are going to launch [on] January 24 another PanAmSat for the New Year."

Galaxy 11 is the last satellite launched by Arianespace in 1999 and another PanAmSat satellite will inaugurate the new year with a Galaxy 10-R set for the end of January 2000.

Todays launch put into orbit the first of the advanced Hughes-built HS 702 model spacecraft. It is one of the seven satellites scheduled for launch over the next 18 months as part of PanAmSats global expansion that includes developing backup capability. Galaxy 11 will increase the redundancy, flexibility and global capacity of the PanAmSat fleet of 20 communication satellites.

Built by Hughes Space and Communications, the first of the advanced HS 702 spacecraft, Galaxy 11 contains a communications payload consisting of 40 Ku-band and 24 C-band high-power transponders. The satellite will initially be located at 99 degrees west longitude over the Galapagos Islands and will provide sweeping coverage of North America and Brazil. After five months, it will be relocated when another Galaxy will be lofted into orbit in a launch planned for late March.

Galaxy 11 is the first of three satellites that PanAmSat intends to launch over the next six months to provide expansion and backup services for the company's Galaxy cable neighborhood customers in North America. Along with the currently operating Galaxy 1-R, 5 and 9 satellites, as well as the upcoming Galaxy 10-R, Galaxy 11 will deliver some of cable televisions most popular programming -- that is to say, dozens of cable channels to virtually all of the 11,000 cable TV companies throughout North America.

This 125th Ariane launch marks the 20th anniversary of Ariane launchers since Ariane L-01 liftoff December 24, 1979. Its the eighth successful mission for the Ariane 4 rocket in 1999, and the sixth 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.

The 4.5-ton Galaxy 11 spacecraft is flying free in space in an elliptical transfer orbit. Over the coming weeks, its orbit will be refined to a circular geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above Earth. Galaxy 11 is 166th satellite launched by Arianespace. The company has also lofted 27 secondary payloads over the past two decades.

With a record pace of eight launches in four and a half months, the French Guiana Space Center complex set a new record as the world's busiest commercial satellite launch site.

Arianespace's current launch backlog of 41 satellites represents more than $3.3 billion in business. Eight of these payloads will be U.S. commercial satellites.

Facing the emerging tough American competition from the new generation of low-cost Evolved Expandable Launch Vehicles (EELV), with Boeing's new Delta 4 series and the new Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 series set to fly within two years, Arianespace engineers are already upgrading the heavy-lift Ariane 5 performance.

The current Ariane 5 can put two satellites totaling 5.9 tons into geostationary orbit. By 2002, capacity should reach 10 tons and, in 2005, 11 tons that is to say two Galaxy 11-type satellites, which will help to keep Arianespace competitive in the cutthroat international launch market where it leads currently with a 60 percent share.