France launched a military spy satellite today, space officials said, part of a boost in spending on independent surveillance, according to Reuters. It was the first such launch under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who brought France back into NATO"s military command earlier this year after a four-decade hiatus. While cooperating more closely with the United States on military planning, France sees independent access to space intelligence as a strategic priority. The satellite, Helios 2B, blasted off on a European Ariane rocket at 1626 GMT from the European Space Agency launch site in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America. It was separated from the Ariane rocket 59 minutes later. Initially scheduled for launch on Dec. 9, countdown was halted several hours before the lift-off when a technical problem in the rocket"s helium subsystem was detected. A second attempt to launch the satellite was halted on Thursday five minutes before blast-off. "The first mission of these tools is to assure France"s independent analysis by having the independent means of acquiring intelligence worldwide," Lieutenant Colonel Christophe Morand, head of the Helios programme of the French military command, told a briefing in Kourou before last week"s aborted launch. "We must be able to furnish the (French) president with proof during a conflict that a country has violated another country"s national sovereignty," Morand said. Defence officials said full disclosure of the satellite"s capacity could not be made public.
