It said the rocket, with a capacity to place up to 10 tonnes of payload into orbit, took off at 2103 GMT more than one hour into the start of the launch window following concern over a pressure sensor.

The first version of the Ariane 5 ECA failed catastrophically on its maiden flight in December 2002. It veered offcourse after liftoff and had to be blown up over the Atlantic, destroying its half-billion-dollar satellite cargo.

The Ariane 5 ECA placed into geostationary orbit the 3.6-tonne XTAR-EUR satellite, due to provide government and military communications for the United States and Spain in a footprint ranging from eastern Brazil to Singapore.

It also released a small Dutch satellite, Sloshsat, weighing 127 kilogrammes (279 pounds) to test the dynamics of fluids in orbit.

More than half a billion euros (650 million dollars) and Europe's bid to rival the United States and Russia in the lucrative market for satellite launches was riding on the mammoth rocket.

The European aeronautics and space giant EADS has a 27.03-percent stake in Arianespace, which operates and markets the Ariane range of launchers designed by the European Space Agency (ESA).

A painstaking inquiry into the 2002 disaster pinned the blame on a cooling system in the ECA's Vulcain-2 motor, an upgraded version of the Vulcain-1 engine that powers the standard 6.8-tonne Ariane 5.

Backed by pledges of 550 million euros (715 million dollars) from ESA's stakeholder nations, a programme was initiated to fix the problem.

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