Europe launches early flight of Ariane 6 rocket

Rolling back the years, Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket took off on its maiden flight on Tuesday, thundering out of the European Space Agency’s jungle launch site in French Guiana in an attempt to restore independent European access to space.

Faced with increasingly intense international competition, European space agencies see Ariane 6 as critical to reestablishing and maintaining their foothold in low Earth orbit and beyond, launching European military satellites , science missions, navigation and communications satellites and other commercial payloads.

With space behind them seemingly climbing flawlessly, ending a year-long hiatus in European heavy-lift launches, mission managers were excited.

“Today, Ariane is back!” said Martin Sion, CEO of ArianeGroup, the rocket’s prime contractor. “With this new launcher, Europe is restoring its autonomous access to space, and we all know how important this is to all of us.

“I want to congratulate you all, thank you all,” he said to flight controllers, engineers and managers in the launch control room. “I am proud of your talent and your commitment. Now, we have to increase the production to serve our customers. It is already underway, and it starts (with) our next launch before the end of the year.”

He made those comments before a problem late in the mission prevented the upper third of the engine’s boat intended to propel the stage back into the atmosphere as planned. That, in turn, delayed the deployment of two small re-entry capsules designed to test innovative heat-shield technologies.

It was not immediately clear what caused the premature shutdown of a new auxiliary propulsion unit, which was needed to pressurize the advanced propellant tanks, whether the glitch could leave the vehicle stranded in space, or whether flight controllers could be able to solve the problem.

Ariane 6’s long-awaited debut began when the hydrogen-fueled Vulcan 2.1 main engine burst into life 183 feet high at 3 pm EDT, followed a few seconds later by the ignition of two solid-fuel strap boosters, each . generating 787,000 pounds of thrust.

The Ariane 6 climbed majestically into the sky atop a combined 1.9 million pounds, breaking the evening silence at the Guyana Space Center and putting on a spectacular, long-awaited show for government and industry dignitaries, launch site personnel and residents of the area.

Clearly visible through a partly cloudy sky, the two strap-on boosters burned out and fell out two minutes after liftoff. The Vulcan 2.1 main engine, which produces 308,000 pounds of thrust, continued to fire for another five minutes before it shut down and the stage fell away, plunging back into the atmosphere where it was expected to break up .

The rocket’s second stage then continued its climb into space. After two firings of its rechargeable Vinci engine and hydrogen fuel, the upper stage reached its planned initial orbit at an altitude of 360 miles one hour after liftoff.

For its maiden flight, the Ariane 6 carried numerous payloads provided by ESA, NASA, industry, research institutions and students. Nine deployable satellites included two small experimental re-entry capsules designed to test new heat shield technologies and two NASA “cubes” built to study radio waves emitted by powerful solar flares.

The third and final engine burn was intended to propel the second stage back into the atmosphere for destructive re-entry, eliminating any chance of creating space debris in low-Earth orbit. But the anomaly that triggered the premature shutdown of the auxiliary drive unit put those plans on hold.

Assuming the issue is eventually resolved, a second launch is planned before the end of the year. Six flights are booked for 2025, eight flights in 2026 and 10 in 2027. After working out of the current backlog, the European space managers hope to maintain a “steady state” of nine launches per year.

“The first launch of its powerful next-generation rocket with the @NASASun scientific instrument on board was a huge leap for @ESA,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a post on X. “Together with our international partners , we are at the forefront of a new era of space exploration.”

The Ariane 6 launch was a major milestone for the 13-nation European Space Agency, prime contractor ArianeGroup, French space agency CNES, which built the launch pad, and Arianespace, the consortium that sells and manages Ariane flights.

The forerunner of the rocket, the Amazing Ariane 5retired last year after 117 flights, including the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021. The Ariane 6 is roughly comparable to the Ariane 5, but uses upgraded components and is expected to cost 40% less to build and work.

But unlike SpaceX, which leads the current launch market with reusable first stages and payload fairings, the Ariane 6 is completely expendable and no components are recovered. Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s director of space transportation, recently told Space News that “our launch requirements are so low that (reusability) would not make economic sense.”

“We don’t really need it at this point,” he said. “But when we ship often in the future, we will need reusability for economic reasons. The second reason for reusability for a European shipper is sustainability. We must have a circular economy in 10 or 20 year, we have to be sustainable.”

The Ariane 6 was originally expected to fly in 2020, but a series of economic and technical obstacles combined to delay the initial flight by four years.

Meanwhile, a joint program with the Russian space agency Roscosmos – launching medium-lift Soyuz rockets from French Guiana – fell apart one after the other. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Adding insult to injury, Europe’s small Vega-C rocket foundered after the second launch ended in failure.

And so, since Ariane 5’s final flight last July, Europe has not had its own rockets to launch European payloads. In fact, at least four satellites originally slated to fly aboard European launchers were carried into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

“You don’t want to depend on anyone, and that’s why every spacefaring nation wants its own access to space,” said Lucia Linares, director of space transport strategy and institutional launches for ESA, in statements that cited the journal Nature.

Two versions of the Ariane 6 are planned: one with two strap-on boosters, the Ariane 62, and a more powerful version, the Ariane 64, with four strap-on boosters. A variety of payload fairings are available to accommodate different payload sizes.

Tolker-Nielsen said that this “modular” system is great from a European perspective.

“It’s a perfect system because Ariane 62 is replacing the Russian Soyuz, and Ariane 64 is replacing Ariane 5,” he said. “So it covers all our needs. Ariane 6 could be the European workhorse for the next 15 to 30 years.”

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