I love the sound of a rocket launch in the morning...Ariane to launch two satellites at 7:36am

UPDATE: seems Ariane are using a Flash player so the embedded player didn't work. Please use the new link to watch it on the Ariane site itself.
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Yep, a good rocket launch to kick-start your Friday morning!

The European Space Agency is launching a Ariane 5 rocket, topped off by two satellites bound for different geostationary orbits: the dedicated Internet satellite EchoStar XVII for the American operator and service 
provider Hughes, and the MSG-3 weather satellite for EUMETSAT, the European
Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. You can read more about the mission.


The launch window opens at 7:36am - 2136 GMT. All conditions at the launch site in French Guiana are currently green. You can watch the launch broadcast live from 7:15am Canberra time through the Ariane website. Sorry it is Flash so I can't embed it.


And what is a Geostationary Orbit? I'm glad you asked. Here's the quick version, from Wikipedia or go to the link and learn a bunch more - even the maths:

A geostationary orbit, or Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), is a circular orbit 35,786 kilometres above the Earth's equator and following the direction of the Earth's rotation. An object in such an orbit has an orbital period equal to the Earth's rotational period (one sidereal day), and thus appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers. Communications satellites and weather satellites are often given geostationary orbits, so that the satellite antennas that communicate with them do not have to move to track them, but can be pointed permanently at the position in the sky where they stay.