Posted: Fri, Apr 4, 2014, 9:47 AM ET (1347 GMT)
A Soyuz rocket lifted off from the European spaceport in South America late Thursday, placing the first in a new series of earth science satellites into orbit. The Soyuz-ST-A rocket lifted off from French Guiana at 5:02 pm EDT (2102 GMT) Thursday, releasing the Sentinel-1A satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit 23 minutes later. The satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space for the European Space Agency and European Commission, carries a C-band synthetic aperture radar to provide all-weather imagery. The satellite is the first in a series of earth observation satellites for the Copernicus program (formerly called Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, or GMES) of earth observation.

Related Links:

•  BBC article
•  Space News article
•  SEN article
•  AP article
•  ESA press release