Esa's Vega rocket puts Proba-V vegetation mission in orbit

Europe's Vega rocket has successfully completed its second mission.

The vehicle left the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 23:06 local time on Monday (02:06 GMT, Tuesday), placing three satellites in orbit.

Its primary payload was the 140kg Proba-V spacecraft.

This will acquire pictures of land use and vegetation changes from an altitude of 820km, maintaining an important data series started by the French Spot satellites in the late 1990s.