The night of past December 17th, the second Soyuz launched from Guyana Space Center performed a 3-hour, 26-minute flight to deploy its payload of the French Pléiades 1 and Chilean SSOT satellites for civilian and defense image gathering, along with four French ELISA micro-satellite demonstrators for defense-related electronic intelligence gathering (ELINT). This was Arianespace’s second mission with the Russian-built medium-lift workhorse launcher performed at the Spaceport, and it occurred less than two months after Soyuz’ historic maiden flight from French Guiana on October 21. Designated Flight VS02 in the Arianespace launcher family numbering system, tonight’s mission involved four burns of Soyuz’ Fregat upper stage, which enabled the six satellites to be released for operations at altitudes ranging from 610 km. to 700 km. Using a new purpose-built payload dispenser developed for Arianespace’s Soyuz missions, the deployment sequence began with the release of Pléiades 1. It was followed by the simultaneous separation of all four ELISA satellites, and the mission was completed with the deployment of SSOT, which occurred 3 hours, 26 minutes after liftoff.
