Selparis

This was a launch of the massive Ariane 5 rocket on July 25th, 2013 at 19:54 UTC from French Guiana carrying a total of 9760 kg into geostationary orbit. The payloads were Alphasat I-XL, which was put into up for Immarsat‘s Broadband network service, and INSAT 3-D, which is an Indian space research satellite.

The Ariane 5 is the workhorse of the European Space Agency, and there was very little by way of drama in this launch – it was just very pretty to watch. The Ariane 5 was intended as a human-rated launch system, so after its first few troubled years it’s been very reliable. Unfortunately, they scrapped the manned spaceplane Hermes that Ariane 5 was supposed to carry, so it has not been used for manned missions. It does carry the unmanned Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station.