launcissues
Latest
Ariane 5 ferried NASA instrument to orbit despite launch scare
The fate of Arianespace's latest launch was in limbo for over an hour after the company detected an anomaly. Ariane 5 lost contact with its ground controllers around nine minutes after liftoff, and Arianespace chief Stephane Israel had to issue an apology with the promise to get to the bottom of what happened. Thankfully, things turned out just fine: its payload communications satellites, the SES 14 and the Al Yah 3, have successfully made it to orbit and resumed communication with their operators. That's great news for NASA too, because it had a science instrument piggybacked on the SES 14 -- the first time one of its science missions flew as a "hosted payload," a term used for a module attached to a commercial satellite.
