Posted: Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 2:35 PM ET (1835 GMT)
A Vega rocket successfully placed a European Earth sciences satellite into orbit late Monday. The Vega lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 9:52 pm EDT Monday (0152 GMT) and placed the Sentinel-2A satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit. The 1,130-kilogram satellite, built by Airbus Defence and Space for ESA and the European Commission, will provide multispectral medium-resolution imagery of the Earth to support various scientific and natural resources purposes. The satellite is part of Europe's Copernicus program of more than a dozen Earth observation spacecraft.

Related Links:

•  BBC article
•  SpaceNews article
•  Spaceflight Now article
•  Reuters article
•  ESA press release