Aeolus at the top of the tower

The Aeolus upper composite arrives at the top of the launch tower at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Here it is joined to the rest of the Vega rocket. Aeolus will be taken into orbit on a Vega rocket. 

Aeolus carries one of the most sophisticated instruments ever to be put into orbit. The first of its kind, the Aladin instrument includes revolutionary laser technology to generate pulses of ultraviolet light that are beamed down into the atmosphere to profile the world’s winds – a completely new approach to measuring the wind from space.