PARIS, December 18. /TASS/: A Russian Soyuz-ST-A carrier rocket with four satellites and Europe’s Cheops telescope intended to search for exoplanets has successfully blasted off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, the flight operator Arianespace announced in a live broadcast on Wednesday.
The launch is a concluding mission for Arianespace in 2019. Within four hours after the liftoff, the Fregat-MT booster will orbit Europe’s Cheops telescope, the Italian Cosmo-SkyMed radar satellite and also three small satellites: the European OPS-SAT and the French EyeSat and ANGELS.
