Final Launch Of Ariane 5

The final Ariane 5 launch for 2009 lifted off Dec 18s from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on a journey to place the French military reconnaissance satellite Helios-2B into Sun-synchronous polar orbit. Flight V193 was the seventh Ariane 5 launch of 2009 and used the last of the GS version of the launcher.

Liftoff of the 49th Ariane 5 mission took place at 17:26 CET/Paris (16:26 UTC; 13:26 French Guiana). The satellite was accurately injected into its target orbit about 59 minutes later. The payload mass for this launch was 5954 kg; the satellite mass was 4200 kg, with payload adapters and dispensers making up the additional 1754 kg.

An attempt to launch flight V193 on 9 December was aborted due to an anomaly being detected in the helium system of the main stage, which necessitated a roll-back to the Final Assembly Building for investigation and repair.

The Ariane 5 GS version uses the Vulcain 1 engine on its main stage, which has been replaced by Vulcain 2 on the two remaining versions of Ariane 5, ECA and ES. These two variants share a common lower composite consisting of the cryogenic main stage and the two solid rocket boosters. The Ariane 5 ES uses a re-ignitable storable propellant upper stage whereas the Ariane 5 ECA is equipped with a cryogenic upper stage.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Arianespace. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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