Europe's Ariane 5 rocket on Wednesday blasted off from French Guiana for the final time, carrying two military communications satellites and leaving its nations with a vacuum in autonomous access to space for the first time in more than four decades.
The 53-metre-tall, three-stage launcher left the launch pad in the French spaceport of Kourou on its 117th and final mission at 7 p.m. local time , deploying two satellites on schedule roughly 30 minutes later, according to a live webcast.
The mission to send France's Syracuse 4B and Germany's Heinrich Hertz satellites to geostationary orbit caps 27 years of service for Ariane 5, whose successor - Ariane 6 - has been hit by technical delays until 2024 for operational use.
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