An Ariane-5 rocket carrying the first specimen of a new generation of European weather satellites was launched on Tuesday from Kourou, French Guiana, Arianespace TV reported.
It left at 9:30 p.m. Belgian time with three “passengers,” for a total weight of nearly 11 tonnes.
The three include the MTG-I1, the first of six new weather satellites from operator Eumetsat under a programme costing 4.3 billion euros, run in cooperation with the European Space Agency ESA.
Its name will later change to Meteosat-12.
The nearly 3.8-tonne satellite, built by Europe’s Thales Alenia Space, will run a geostationary orbit and has an anticipated lifetime of 8.5 years.
The two other artificial satellites are the Galaxy-35 and Galaxy-36 from US operator Intelsat.
The combined weight of the telecommunication satellites, built by California’s Maxar, is nearly 6.4 tonnes. Their lifetime is at least 15 years.
