Ariane Rocket Bearing TV Satellite Lifts Off
A powerful French-built Ariane 4 rocket carrying a communications satellite and a star mapper streaked toward space Tuesday, 10 hours after the shuttle Columbia was launched in Florida.
The 194-foot rocket, the most powerful launcher in the European inventory, streaked away from the European Space Agency’s jungle launch complex on the northern coast of South America.
The goal of the Ariane flight, the sixth of nine planned for this year, was the launch of the TV-SAT 2 communications satellite, a West German direct broadcast television relay station, and an astronomy satellite called Hipparcos.
Hipparcos, equipped with a reflecting telescope, will be used to accurately measure the positions of thousands of stars, allowing astronomers to create high-detail star maps and to measure the distances to nearby stars.
The flight plan called for TV-SAT 2 to be ejected into a preliminary egg-shaped orbit 21 minutes after liftoff, followed two minutes later by Hipparcos.
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