Enlarge / The final Vega rocket climbs away from its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. (credit: ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin)

The final flight of Europe's Vega rocket lifted off Wednesday night from French Guiana, carrying an important environmental monitoring satellite for the European Union's flagship Copernicus program.

The 98-foot-tall (30-meter) Vega rocket took off at 9:50 pm EDT Wednesday (01:50 UTC Thursday) from the European-run spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launcher headed north from the launch pad on the coast of South America, aiming for a polar orbit about 480 miles (775 kilometers) above the Earth.

The sole payload was Sentinel-2C, a remote sensing platform set to join Europe's fleet of Copernicus environmental satellites. The multibillion-dollar Copernicus system is the world's most comprehensive space-based Earth observation network, with satellites fitted with different kinds of instruments monitoring land surfaces, oceans, and the atmosphere.

Enlarge / Europe's first Ariane 6 rocket lifts off from a new launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. (credit: Jody Amiet/AFP via Getty Images)

The first European Ariane 6 rocket fired off its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and climbed into orbit Tuesday, an inaugural flight a decade in the making that restored Europe's ability to put its own large satellites into space.

The debut of the Ariane 6 rocket came almost exactly one year after Europe's previous workhorse rocket, the Ariane 5, flew for the final time. Running four years late, the Ariane 6 is set to become Europe's next flagship launcher. But delays in its development, combined with other factors, forced European governments to pay SpaceX to deliver several payloads to orbit.

With Tuesday's test flight, European space officials hope those days are behind them. The European Space Agency paid more than $4 billion to get the Ariane 6 rocket to this point, with the goal of replacing the Ariane 5 with a cheaper, more capable launcher. There are still pressing questions about Ariane 6's cost per launch, and whether the rocket will ever be able to meet its price target and compete with SpaceX and other companies in the commercial market.

Enlarge / The first Ariane 6 rocket is pictured inside the mobile gantry on its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. The gantry will wheel away from the rocket during the countdown Tuesday. (credit: ESA-S. Corvaja)

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket is finally ready to fly, four years late but vital as ever for European governments backing the more than $4 billion project.

Set for liftoff from French Guiana, the new rocket will be Europe's flagship launcher for the next decade, providing rides to space for European science probes, navigation satellites, and military payloads. Ariane 6 also has a toehold in the commercial market, with a contract for 18 launches to deliver satellites to orbit for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network.

The first Ariane 6 rocket has a four-hour launch window opening at 2 pm EDT (18:00 UTC) Tuesday to depart the European-run Guiana Space Center in South America.