Europe's powerful Ariane 6 rocket just launched for the second time ever.
The Ariane 6 lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana today (March 6) at 11:24 a.m. EST (1624 GMT; 1:24 p.m. local time in Kourou), carrying a French spy satellite aloft.
The launch was originally planned for Monday (March 3), but that attempt was scrubbed due to "further operations needed on a ground means interfacing with the launcher," according to the France-based company Arianespace.
Ariane 6, which Arianespace operates on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), is the successor to the workhorse Ariane 5, which retired in 2023 after 117 orbital missions.
It took longer than expected for the new rocket to come online. Development of the Ariane 6 began in 2014, but the launcher didn't debut until last July, when it successfully sent nine cubesats to orbit. The flight didn't go perfectly, however; the Ariane 6's upper stage failed to complete an engine burn designed to set up the deployment of two experimental reentry capsules.
ESA had originally aimed to launch the Ariane 6's second mission last year but took some extra time to address the issues experienced on Flight 1.
Related: Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket launches on long-awaited debut mission (video)
The second Ariane 6 launch sent up an optical spy satellite called CSO-3 for the French military. The rocket deployed CSO-3 into a sun-synchronous orbit about 500 miles (800 kilometers) above Earth 66 minutes after liftoff as planned, Arianespace announced via X.
Satellites in sun-synchronous orbit cruise over patches of the planet at the same local solar time each day, meaning they view those areas with consistent lighting conditions over time. This type of orbit is therefore particularly popular with spy and weather satellites.
"CSO-3 is the third in a constellation of three military Earth-observation satellites for the DGA-led MUSIS program (Multinational Space-based Imaging System)," the French space agency CNES said in a statement. (The DGA, or Direction générale de l'armement, is the French government's defense procurement agency.)
The first two members of the network, CSO-1 and CSO-2, launched in 2018 and 2020, respectively.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3 p.m. ET on March 3 with news of the launch scrub. It was updated again at 2:30 a.m. ET on March 6 with news of the new March 6 launch date. It was updated again at 11:30 a.m. ET on March 6 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 12:45 p.m. ET with news of satellite deployment.
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