The European Space Agency breathed a sigh of relief on April 7, 2003. An Ariane 5 rocket finally managed to take off and put two communication satellites safely into orbit.
The launch itself was delayed for 24 hours due to a fault discovered in one of the satellites. The launch was carried out at 19:52 local time into the cloudy equatorial night sky from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana on the north coast of the South American continent. The missile could be seen in flight for less than two minutes.
29 minutes after the launch, Ariane company officials said that the Indian satellite INSAT 3A separated from the missile. INSAT will provide television and communication services to the Indian subcontinent and is being built for ISRO - the Indian Space Research Organization. The satellite was built at the space facility near Bangalore.
11 minutes later, the second satellite, Galaxy XII, was also released. This satellite will serve the communication needs in the US for PanAmSat. The satellite was built in Virginia by Orbital Science.
The launch was the first launch of Ariane 5 after a failed launch in December 2002 in which two satellites with a total value of 600 million dollars were destroyed. This was not the first failure of the Ariane 5 rocket and these failures are also added to the drop in demand for satellite launches.
The director of Ariane Space, Jean-Yves Le Gal said that the future of Ariane 5 launches depends on the desire of European governments to make a financial commitment to the space program. "The question is whether Europe wants to maintain an independent space industry while the US subsidizes its space industry," he said.
The latest launch was the 15th in the Ariane 5 series since 1996. The first launch ended in notable failure after the rocket exploded 37 seconds after launch. Two other launches ended by placing the satellites in too low an orbit and therefore they cannot perform their role as communication satellites. In December 2002, an attempt was made to launch an improved rocket capable of launching satellites with a total weight of 10 tons, but the rocket was destroyed due to a deviation from its trajectory a few minutes after launch. In February 2003, the last missile in the relatively successful Ariane 4 series was launched.
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