The World - News from March 13, 1988

The successful launch of two 1.2-ton satellites by a West European Ariane 3 rocket has given an important boost to Western satellite operators after two years of frustration following the Challenger shuttle disaster, space officials said in Paris. The launch from Kourou, French Guiana, also helped avert a potential French telecommunications crisis, they said. The satellites--Telecom 1C, owned by the French telecommunciations authority, and Spacenet III/Geostar RO1, owned by GTE Spacenet, a private U.S. satellite group--were placed in elliptical orbits after a launch from the jungle space center on the northern coast of South America.