Jean-Yves Le Gall immediately apologized to customers for the failure of the Ariane rocket, which was carrying two satellites: a Hotbird TM7 for the European telecoms consortium Eutelsat and Stentor, an experimental communications satellite for the French space research institute CNES.

"Our job is difficult, it's at moments like this we are cruelly reminded of it," he said at the base at Kourou in the French south American territory of Guiana. "We have already known failures, we will know more."

The Ariane 5-ESCA is the European Arianespace consortium's latest weapon in its battle with Boeing and Lockheed Martin of the United States for domination of the world satellite launch market.

SPACE.WIRE