ESA’s Aeolus satellite ready to be encapsulated in the Vega rocket fairing. Liftoff is set for 21 August at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. 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.