Arianespace confirmed its position as the world’s leading commercial launch provider in 2008, and will build upon that success this year with a focus on its expanded family of launch vehicles. Six to eight Ariane 5 launches are slated in 2009, with payloads such as the European Space Agency’s Herschel astronomy space telescope and the organization’s Planck cosmic background mapping satellite – as well as Terrestar-1, one of the world’s largest commercial communications satellites.