The UK telecommunications industry hopes a satellite that has gone into orbit will help maintain its global leadership in the sector. A quarter of the world's big telecom spacecraft are made in Britain, and the new Quantum Platform is built as the market's next generation product. Quantum has launched on an Ariane rocket from French Guiana last night. Here's our science correspondent, Tronth Namos. Another rocket climbs Skyward to bolster a sector that Europe and the UK in particular has come to dominate, the business of telecommunications satellites. There are hundreds of these spacecraft overhead, bouncing TV, funcalls, broadband and other data services around the planet. But the new satellite going into orbit called Quantum represents a big step forward in technology. While traditional telecom spacecraft are configured before launch to do very specific tasks, Quantum has been built for flexibility. It's the sector's first fully reprogrammable spacecraft. It's able to rapidly change the coverage, bandwidth, power and frequency of its signals. One of its uses will be for disaster response, providing emergency communications to the teams that are sent in to help people in places hit by catastrophic floods or earthquakes. Quantum's manufacturers in the UK, that's Airbus and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, will incorporate the prototypes technology into their future spacecraft, hoping to maintain their world-leading status in what's become a highly competitive field. Jonathan Namos, BBC News. The new satellite has been launched into the UK for a few years. Sample there, all in Shanghai. This is BBC News. Let's have a look at the weather here. Here's Luiz here. Hello there. Lighter winds today, but there has been quite a lot of cloud around and some loosened showers as well. Some of those showers have been heavy and thundery. Take a look at this pretty threatening looking weather watcher picture from loose and kent that was sent in earlier on. Now, if we take a look at the satellite picture, you can see the amount of cloud around the brighter white that storm avar that's now in Scandinavia. So we have seen some clouds sitting across the country. The best of any breaks has been shipped through eastern areas, but you can see that real cluster of sharp showers that's developed through the course of the afternoon, stretching across south Wales, central and southern England with one or two rumbles of thunder mixed in there as well. Also been a few news and showers to the east of the penines too. Now over the next few hours, those showers should start to ease down just the touch. And as they continue to clear away through the night, we will see the cloud breaking up in places. So to be a quiet night to come, it'll be a slightly cooler one in Scotland, particularly in sheltered rural areas with a few scattered showers in the far north here. Over night lows generally of around nine to 14 degrees. We're going to start off the night.