Thursday 2 August 2012 marked the 50th successful Ariane flight in a row: an Ariane 5 was launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to perform a dual deployment of two telecommunications satellites, Intelsat 20 and Hylas-2, into their planned transfer orbits.

Lift off of flight VA208 took place at 22:54 CEST; 17:54 French Guiana time. This was Ariane 5’s fourth launch of 2012, continuing a line of launch successes unbroken since 2003.