After being sealed within its Vega rocket fairing, Aeolus has been rolled out to the launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Here it will join the rest of the rocket in the launch tower in preparation for liftoff on 21 August at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST).
Aeolus carries one of the most sophisticated instruments ever to be put into orbit. The first of its kind, the Aladin instrument includes revolutionary laser technology to generate pulses of ultraviolet light that are beamed down into the atmosphere to profile the world’s winds – a completely new approach to measuring the wind from space.