European rocket Ariane 5 lifts up to 10 tons, 50th flight

Europe's Ariane 5 rocket has made its 50th flight

from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The generic Ariane 5 launcher went into full commercial service in 1999,

and was followed a few years later by the beefed-up version, the ECA,

which is capable of lofting nearly 10 tonnes of payload into a

geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) some 36,000km above the Earth

video source: news.bbc.co.uk