Following Saturday night’s successful Ariane 5 launch – the second this year – six satellites built by Astrium have now been launched in just over a month: COMSATBw-2 and ASTRA 3B on 21 May, Arabsat 5B by a Proton launcher on 4 June, TanDEM-X by Dnepr on 21 June and now Arabsat 5A and COMS by Ariane 5 at 22.41 BST on 26 June.
The six satellites comprised three commercial communications satellites (Arabsat 5A & 5B, and ASTRA 3B), a military communications satellite (COMSATBw-2) and two Earth observation satellites (COMS for meteorological and oceanographic applications and TanDEM-X for 3D mapping of the Earth).

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