{"id":353295,"date":"2025-12-18T13:09:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:09:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353295\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T13:09:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T13:09:13","slug":"ariane-6-rocket-launches-with-eu-galileo-satellite-dw-12-17-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/353295\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariane 6 rocket launches with EU Galileo satellite \u2013 DW \u2013 12\/17\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the first time since 2018, two EU Galileo <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/satellites\/t-64645143\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">satellites<\/a> were launched into <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/space\/t-64606735\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">space<\/a> on board a European rocket.<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/ariane-6-how-to-build-a-space-rocket-step-by-step\/a-69501393\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ariane 6<\/a> took off from the Kourou space base in French Guiana at 2:01 a.m. (0501 GMT) on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<p>Why is the Ariane 6 launch important for Europe?<\/p>\n<p>The Ariane 6 expendable rocket <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/europe-successfully-launches-ariane-6-rocket\/a-69610737\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">only came into service last year<\/a>, following the Ariane 5 that last carried a Galileo satellite in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, the EU has been reliant on Russian \u2014 until the invasion of Ukraine \u2014 and US rockets.<\/p>\n<p>The Galileo program itself is also a\u00a0<a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/galileo-satellite-navigation-system-back-in-action-after-partial-outage\/a-49596058\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">global navigation satellite system<\/a> aimed at making the EU less dependent on the US&#8217;s Global Positioning System (GPS).<\/p>\n<p>The previous Galileo launch took place at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in September 2024, carried by Falcon 9 rockets belonging to Elon Musk&#8217;s SpaceX.<\/p>\n<p>Are we losing the night sky to satellites?<\/p>\n<p class=\"vjs-no-js\">To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that <a href=\"https:\/\/videojs.com\/html5-video-support\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n<p>German minister praises &#8216;increased precision and resilience&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday&#8217;s launch brings the total number of Galileo satellites in orbit to 24.<\/p>\n<p>The addition of the two new satellites, which were set to arrive in orbit some four hours after lift-off, &#8220;will improve the robustness of the Galileo system by adding spares to the constellation to guarantee the system can provide 24\/7 navigation to billions of users,&#8221; the <a class=\"internal-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/european-space-agency-esa\/t-18949650\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">European Space Agency (ESA)<\/a> said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The satellites will join the constellation in medium Earth orbit 23, 222 km (14,429 miles) above Earth&#8217;s surface,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p>German Research, Technology and Space Minister Dorothee B\u00e4r highlighted that both satellites had been built by the German company OHB.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With the further expansion of the European Galileo system and today&#8217;s launch of two more satellites, we are gaining increased precision and resilience,&#8221; B\u00e4r said.<\/p>\n<p>Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time since 2018, two EU Galileo satellites were launched into space on board a European&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":["post-353295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}