Past December the 19th of 2012 , has taken a new successful flight of Ariane 5 with the Skynet 5D and Mexsat Bicentenario satellite passengers. During 2012, the Arianespace launcher family performed a total of 10 missions from the Spaceport in French Guiana, led by the heavy-lift Ariane 5 with its 10-metric-ton payload lift performance – which has logged 53 consecutive successes during the past 10 years. Arianespace’s mission cadence in 2012 was called “remarkable” by Chairman & CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall. “It confirms the interest, effectiveness and availability of our launcher product line – which enables us to launch all satellites, for all of our customers, to all orbits,” he said during comments after today’s flight. “In addition, 2012 also marked a yearly record in terms of payload mass placed into orbit, since – for the first time – we have reached a total of nearly 75 tons, of which 20 tons was for the Edoardo Amaldi Automated Transfer Vehicle! The Arianespace launcher family missions performed from French Guiana this year were composed of seven heavy-lift Ariane 5 flights, two with the medium-lift Soyuz, and the lightweight Vega’s inaugural launch. 2012 in numbers: Arianespace continues to lead the industry for commercial launch services The 11 missions performed by Arianespace’s launcher family during the past 12 months are detailed in this photo collage, with the Spaceport’s year-ending Ariane 5 flight shown in the top row at left, and Vega’s historic 2012 opening mission in the bottom row, at right. In addition to 10 launches flown from French Guiana by Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega in 2012, the year’s activity included a Baikonur Cosmodrome liftoff, carried out by the company’s Starsem subsidiary. Arianespace achieved an impressive and record-breaking year of activity during 2012, employing its complete launcher family to perform 10 total flights from the Spaceport in French Guiana with the heavy-lift Ariane 5, medium-lift Soyuz and lightweight Vega; along with a Soyuz mission from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. These 11 flights lofted a cumulative payload weight of some 75,000 kg. – the most ever for Arianespace in a single calendar year, and were composed of seven Ariane 5 missions, three Soyuz launches and one Vega liftoff. The mass of primary and secondary passengers accommodated on these flights ranged from 20 metric tons to 1 kg. In operations at the Spaceport during the past 12 months, Arianespace’s Ariane 5 and Soyuz vehicles carried 11 civil and military telecommunications spacecraft for its worldwide customers, launched Europe’s third Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to service the International Space Station, delivered two In-Orbit Validation platforms for the European Galileo satellite navigation constellation, lofted Europe’s MSG-3 meteorological platform, and orbited the Pléiades 1B optical imaging satellite for French and European defense ministries.
