BRUSSELS — A Russian rocket launched the first two satellites of the European Union’s Galileo navigation system today after years of waiting for the start of the program billed as the main rival to the ubiquitous American GPS network.

The launch of the Soyuz from French Guiana, on the northern coast of South America, marks the maiden voyage of the Russian rocket outside the former Soviet Union, with European and Russian authorities cheering at liftoff.

“It is a double-page spread in spatial history, European and Russian,” said Laurent Wauquiez, France’s higher education minister and former deputy minister for European affairs. “It is without doubt one of the most beautiful stories of cooperation. ... This gives us strength and an extraordinary competitive advantage in the spatial domain.”

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said it is the first time that two teams worked together on the launch of the Soyuz.

The rocket was expected to place into orbit the Galileo IOV-1 PFM and FM2 satellites during a nearly four-hour mission. The two satellites will be released in opposite directions.

“The first part of this mission went well,” Jean-Yves Le Gall, chairman and CEO of Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency, said in a brief statement to officials before returning to the control room.

He said the rocket is expected to travel over Asia, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean.

Antonio Tajani, the EU’s industry and enterprise commissioner, called the launch “a great result” that sends “a very strong political message.”

“Europe shows that she is capable of managing a big project just days from the European economic summit,” he said.

The EU had all the pomp and speeches about the dawning of a new age prepared for Thursday, but was forced to postpone it for 24 hours because of a leaky valve that kept a Russian Soyuz rocket grounded at the launch site in French Guiana.

The Galileo system has become a symbol of EU infighting, inefficiency and delay, but officials are hoping it will kick off a trans-Atlantic competition with the American GPS network.

GPS has become the global consumer standard in satellite navigation over the past decade, reducing the need for awkward oversized maps and arguments with back seat drivers about whether to turn left or right.

Now, the EU wants Galileo to dominate the future with a system that is more precise and more reliable than GPS, while controlled by civil authorities.