The 4.7-tonne Ariane 44L, a beefed-up version of the rocket that has provided the backbone of European Space Agency (ESA) launches for more than 14 years, blasted off from Kourou, French Guiana, at 2304 GMT, Arianespace announced from its headquarters at Evry, near Paris.

Twenty-one minutes later it placed its payload, telecoms satellite NSS-6 for Dutch-based company New Skies Satellites NV, in orbit.

The satellite was put into geostationary orbit, 36,000 kilometersmiles) from the Earth, providing phone and Internet links between Australia, the Middle East, South Africa, India, China and northeast and southeastern Asia.

It is the 12th Ariane launch of the year and the penultimate one by an Ariane 4, which made its first flight in 1988.

The workhorse is due to be phased out next February and replaced by the bigger Ariane 5, which in 14 missions has seen two catastrophic failures and two launches that have placed satellites in the wrong orbits.

The latest setback was on December 11, when a new heavyweight version of the Ariane 5 had to be blown up a few minutes after launch after it veered disastrously offcourse.

It carried a Hotbird TM7, a TV satellite built for Eutelsat, Stentor, an experimental communications satellite built for the French space institute CNES. The two satellites, together worth several hundred million dollars, were also lost.

Initial inquiries point to problems with the main-stage engine, the Vulcain-2, which is one of several modifications aimed at increasing Ariane 5's capacity from 5.9 tonnes to a massive 10 tonnes.

ESA set up an independent panel to probe the failure, which is due to report back on January 6.

That is just six days before the opening of the launch window for one of ESA's most prestigious scientific missions next year -- the liftoff of a standard Ariane 5 carrying an unmanned spacecraft, Rosetta, which is destined to loop around Mars on a distant trip to study the comet Wirtanen.

The mission has a launch window of 20 days, which means it could be at threat if the inquiry panel finds a major flaw with Ariane 5's design.

SPACE.WIRE