APOGEE STAFF
Space interests across Europe eagerly awaited the first liftoff of Ariane 6, hoping for an end to a launch crisis that drove vital payloads to foreign companies, tested relations within the multinational European Space Agency, and raised national security questions for the leader of the French space command.
Successor to the first commercial launch vehicle, the most reliable rocket of its time, Ariane 6 was delayed by a host of factors — cost overruns, the challenge of meeting its lofty technical goals and supply chain interruptions blamed in part on the COVID-19 pandemic. Development began in 2014, with launch projected six years later. Instead, it wasn’t until July 9, 2024, that the white rocket bearing the number 6 fashioned from the flags of its 13 partner nations finally lifted off from a custom-built oceanside launch zone on French territory in northeastern South America.
In the decade that had passed, the launch landscape underwent dramatic change. Low Earth orbit overtook the higher orbits traditionally served by Ariane as the favored destination of satellite operators, lowering the barrier to launch and spawning a host of competitors. Chief among these is the new workhorse of launch, the Falcon 9 from United States-based SpaceX — a company that keeps per-launch costs low, in part, by sending up its own payloads of Starlink broadband internet satellites.
The Ariane 6 task force — chief procurer the European Space Agency (ESA), prime contractor ArianeGroup of France, operator ArianeSpace and launch director CNES, the French space agency — now faces questions about whether the new launch vehicle can find a sustainable niche in what’s come to be known as New Space. “Ariane 6 is in the hot seat,” Pierre Lionnet, research and managing director with the Paris-based space industry group Eurospace, told Apogee. The program reflects “the concepts and the market projections of maybe 10, 20 years ago, but with a different competition and marketing reality. The problem is that (demand) by itself is not sufficient to guarantee sufficient activity of the launcher to enable pricing, cadence and costs as expected.”
In response, as ESA and its partners analyze the results from the first Ariane 6 launch and prepare for the next one, they are adapting to the new realities of launch. ESA member nations may be asked to pay to support the exploitation phase of the rocket, an investment not planned originally, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA director of space transportation, told Apogee. Exploitation is ESA terminology for the launcher’s use phase. The smaller Vega-C rocket, conceived by ESA as a complement to the heavy-lift Ariane, has been pulled from Arianespace to be operated by Vega’s prime contractor, Avio of Italy. Arianespace announced in September 2024 a schedule for Ariane 6 of six flights in 2025, eight in 2026 and 10 in 2027, then averaging nine or 10 flights annually from then on. That’s as many as SpaceX launches in a month. Tolker-Nielsen said ramping up to 12 Ariane 6 launches a year has been discussed.
Ariane 6 is the European guaranteed access to space, and it will be able to launch all our governmental missions to any orbit — low Earth orbit; medium Earth orbit, where we have our constellations for navigation; geostationary orbit, or at least geotransfer; and even the moon. Ariane 6 can do it all.” ~ Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA director of space transportation
“I think Ariane 6 will be able to play a marginal role as an alternative to Falcon 9,” Tolker-Nielsen said, speaking from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on the eve of a Vega-C launch in September 2024. “It’s not the intention to compete but at least to be an alternative on the world market, which I think there is a place for … just for the fact that nobody wants to be dependent on a monopoly on a global scale for access to space.”
More importantly, Tolker-Nielsen said, Ariane 6 is proving it can satisfy the needs of its chief customers — the sovereign institutions that fly to space for the benefit of Europe and its people — by providing services such as Earth observation, scientific research and national security. This includes ESA and its 22 member nations; agencies such as EUMETSAT, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites; and the European Commission, executive arm of the 27-member European Union. “ESA will closely work with the European Commission to develop a joint ambition for space in Europe and to implement space programs for European citizens,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher wrote in his 2021 vision statement.
“Ariane 6 is the European guaranteed access to space,” Tolker-Nielsen said, “and it will be able to launch all our governmental missions to any orbit — low Earth orbit; medium Earth orbit, where we have our constellations for navigation; geostationary orbit, or at least geotransfer; and even the moon. Ariane 6 can do it all, and that’s fundamental — for Europe to have this capability independently.” Plans call for a more powerful version of Ariane 6 to carry the European lunar lander Argonaut and to play a role someday in orbital refueling.
A historic moment
There are 29 launches on the Ariane 6 manifest through 2028, for institutional and commercial customers. Arianespace has confirmed that a second launch was planned in early 2025. Earlier company announcements said the manifest includes the French military surveillance satellite CSO-3, originally set to orbit in 2021; the OPTUS-11 communications satellite covering Australia and New Zealand; satellites for EUMETSAT; and the Galileo position, navigation and timing system. Galileo is Europe’s version of the U.S. GPS system.
Eighteen launches on the manifest are for U.S.-based Amazon and its Kuiper broadband network. Amazon said it plans to orbit a constellation of 3,000 satellites and has secured a total of 80 launches with Arianespace and U.S. launchers Blue Origin, SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Also on the horizon: The EU’s IRIS2 Satellite Constellation, to be deployed over several years in multiple orbits to provide secure communications for government and business and high-speed internet where it’s lacking. IRIS2 was motivated, in part, by concerns over reliance on Starlink — a tool in Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.
The planned Ariane 6 launch frequency is unlikely to cover the estimated $80 million cost of a launch, threatening to undermine financial and political support for the program across Europe, said Lionnet, an economist who has worked for 30 years in space policy and other areas. ESA has acknowledged that despite standardizing components and other measures, the rocket’s makers have fallen short of their goals to cut the cost of its predecessor in half. But fielding a rocket that pays for itself may be a secondary consideration, Lionnet said. “If you want your own launch, you cannot expect that (market) price system. You suck it up, you keep a stiff upper lip because you accept this as a national approach. Like the military. I know it’s an expensive capacity, but I build it, my own fighter jet, the way I want it. It could be cheaper to buy the American model, probably much cheaper.” He added, “We just don’t like launching our defense satellites outside Europe. The problem is always with the export agreements you need to sign and the technical information you need to share. So, this is the main drive: Launching on European soil, even if it’s in Kourou, ensures that all the proper secrecy can be maintained for those programs.”
Lionnet also dismissed criticism of the Ariane 6 delays, noting that all new rocket programs require more time than projected. The maiden launch in 1996 of the highly successful Ariane 5 program, for example, ended in an explosion just 40 seconds after liftoff. Elon Musk was near the end of his budget just as he achieved success with the Falcon precursor. “Vulcan is late, Falcon 9 is late. Launchers are late. This is the reality. This criticism is not the right one, you see. Every launcher has been introduced late.”
No one was talking about busted deadlines amid all the spirited cheers at the CNES control room in Kourou when Ariane 6 lifted off for the first time. Rain clouds cleared, a blue sky emerged and the yellow cryogenic fueling arms embracing the rocket quickly spread wide. The two strap-on boosters ignited in flame and smoke to lift the launch vehicle and position it to streak northwest toward Scotland en route to the release of its satellites. The boosters separated, the faring shield that protects the payload flapped away, the main stage engine cut off, and eight minutes after liftoff, the nozzle of the innovative Vinci engine — capable of stopping and restarting to place payloads into different orbits — glowed orange as it pulled away with the rocket’s upper stage and powered it into space. “We’re relieved, we’re excited,” Aschbacher told reporters afterward. “This is a historic moment. The inaugural launch of a new heavy-lift rocket doesn’t happen every year. It happens only every 20 years or maybe 30 years. And today we have launched Ariane 6 successfully.”
The first launch was a demonstration mission to determine whether Ariane 6 could perform as planned. With one exception, the answer was yes. The technology-packed upper stage deployed nine microsatellites from institutional and private players, ranging from NASA to students designing their first spacecraft. The satellites are now measuring gamma rays, tracking wildlife, testing self-healing solar cells, enabling smart farming, and more, ESA said on its website. The Vinci engine successfully restarted twice, but failed a third time when it was supposed to slow the upper stage for reentry and disintegration so it wouldn’t contribute to the space debris in low Earth orbit. This also prevented the vehicle from carrying out a final phase of the mission: deploying two beach ball-sized capsules to gather data about reentry and test the performance of their heat shields. A review of the failure found no “showstoppers,” and the Ariane 6 task force concluded in September that the engine’s failure to reignite could be resolved by a software change. The fix was made, the next launch is on schedule, and future upper stages should safely de-orbit once they have delivered their payloads, the task force said.
Most customers on the launch manifest have contracted for the beefier Ariane 64 version of the launch vehicle, featuring four P120C strap-on, solid-fuel boosters. This rocket can lift 11.5 metric tons into geostationary transfer orbit, at about 36,000 kilometers altitude, or 21.6 metric tons into low Earth orbit, from 100 kilometers to 2,000 kilometers. The Ariane 62 version has two of the boosters. This flexibility represents one improvement over Ariane 5. Others include the Vinci engine, capable of restarting four times; two faring sizes that can accommodate all types of satellites; and an improved, liquid-fueled, main-stage Vulcain 2.1 engine. Taken together, these changes enable Ariane 6 to carry more and heavier payloads than its predecessor. A more powerful Block 2 version of the launch vehicle is in the works and Block 3 is under consideration. Europe’s Spaceport also underwent modernization to accommodate the new rocket and allow for more frequent launches. A higher launch frequency can confirm the rocket’s reliability and spread fixed costs over more missions.
A new paradigm
The success of the first launch eased some of the tensions that had tested European cooperation in space, a concept born in the 1950s and 1960s out of concern among the continent’s political leaders that they were being eclipsed by the United States and the Soviet Union. In the weeks before Ariane 6 lifted off, Maj. Gen. Philippe Adam, French Air and Space Force commander, expressed frustration over the extended absence of access to space. “We have a problem with launchers,” Adam told a group of defense journalists in May 2024, according to europeanspaceflight.com. “It is not easy to launch a geostationary satellite, even a small one, these days.” Adam’s immediate concern was the YODA experimental nanosatellite, designed to investigate suspicious maneuvers by spacecraft from the People’s Republic of China and Russia. YODA, for “eYes on Orbit to Demonstrate Agility,” originally was planned for launch in 2023. Military payloads accounted for relatively few Ariane 5 launches over its quarter-century of service, Defense News reported, but these satellites — chiefly developed for secure communications — were seen as vital for national security: Skynet 5 for the United Kingdom, Syracuse 3 and 4 for France, Sicral-2 for Italy, Secomsat and SpainSat for Spain, and Satcom BW for Germany’s Armed Forces.
One institutional customer, EUMETSAT, drew criticism in June 2024 when it canceled its contract to ride aboard the third planned Ariane 6 launch and switched to SpaceX, instead. EUMETSAT indicated it made the change to ensure that its Meteosat MTG-S1 satellite would lift off on schedule in 2025, but Arianespace and the CNES complained that failing to wait for the return of Ariane set back efforts to secure a European launch capability. “It is definitely something we hope to avoid in the future,” said Tolker-Nielsen of ESA. “The decision was made at a point in time where the planning of Ariane 6 was not so clear, and it was very important for EUMETSAT to launch in time. But we’re coming out of this launcher crisis, and they have expressed that this is an exception.”
The European Union also turned to SpaceX for sensitive Galileo launches while it waited for Ariane 6, as did Germany for the launch of military satellites. France declined to do so. And just a few days after the EUMETSAT announcement, ESA thanked SpaceX for squeezing in the launch of the ESA Euclid research satellite, originally set to lift off from Kourou aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. French and European institutions had come to rely on Soyuz rockets as long as they launched from Kourou — within an overseas territory of France — but the arrangement ended with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Frustration with delays in Ariane 6 helped form the backdrop for a meeting in Seville, Spain, in November 2023 among ministers from the 22 nations who make up the governing ESA Council. So did differing viewpoints on the need for a European launcher and on growing investment in national space programs at the expense of ESA. For example, Lionnet said, “At some point in time, the French are very strong in saying, ‘We need a sovereign launch,’ and the Germans are saying, ‘We’re not so convinced.’ Then the Germans are saying, ‘We would be happy to buy launch on the market and at the same time, we would like to see a German sovereign launch.’” Still, the Seville meeting ended with the ESA unified over the need to shift the paradigm of European access to space, Tolker-Nielsen said.
He told Apogee, “Ever since Ariane 1, we have had ESA-developed launchers and now, these ESA-developed launchers — Ariane 6 and Vega-C — are our guaranteed access to space and we will maintain them and be sure that they are operational. But at the same time, in parallel, we will develop private launchers to … establish a competitive environment and eventually, perhaps, have only privately developed launchers. This will create a resilient, a competitive access to space for Europe. That’s the long-term vision for the ’30s.”
Cooperation in space, then, will take on a different look across Europe, even as the new rockets developed under the old paradigm enter their service lives. The ESA Council announced in Seville a European Launcher Challenge, likened by some to the NASA development model: funding startups that are developing new rockets, issuing contracts for future missions, and allowing access to its spaceport. Four smaller launch companies have been approved to work from Kourou and all aim to develop reusable rockets, enabling more competitive prices. They are MaiaSpace, an ArianeGroup subsidiary; PLD Space of Spain; and Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg, both based in Germany.
“It’s not for what they’ll be doing today, but for what they’ll be doing in the future,” Tolker-Nielsen said, “because they’re developing mini- and microlaunchers, which are probably not viable economically on the market. They’re too small. They all have plans of growing in several steps and we’re going to help them with this.” ESA refined its rocket challenge later by defining what constitutes a European launch service, calling it “key to ensure European autonomous access to space.” The definition includes considerations on the nationality of the provider and the location of system development, manufacturing and operations. “Ministers have launched a new competitive European ambition in space transportation,” the agency said on its website, “to empower Europe to regain its commercial position, reduce the need for public funding and retain its place in the world by making ESA an anchor customer and enabler of commercial space activities and services.”
Model for others
Questions linger in this era of New Space about the launch landscape across Europe. A number of factors hinder efficiencies under the current architecture, Lionnet said, including relatively low European demand and an ESA funding system — known as geographical return — guaranteeing member states that their investments in most agency programs will be returned to them one for one through contracts with their national industries. In a paper published in March 2023, Aschbacher, the ESA director general, argued for “higher flexibility” in implementing geo-return as a means of encouraging competition, but he insisted the policy remains a powerful incentive for investment in European space programs. Said Lionnet, “If you must buy a battery from the U.K. because they contributed to that program for the battery element, then you cannot buy a cheaper one in France. Inefficiencies are inherent in the rule.”
Still, the basic philosophy behind the development of Ariane — to do things in space that one country cannot do alone — has served Europe well through the decades and rates a closer look by democracies around the world, according to a July 2024 commentary by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C.-based policy research group. Authors Clayton Swope, deputy director of the center’s Aerospace Security Project, and former intern Stephanie Songer note the political risk of sharing decision-making and control but point to the enduring success of the NATO defense alliance as an example of how it can work. “No one nation holds all the cards and can make decisions unilaterally,” they wrote. “The main lesson from the Ariane project is that there are times when national economic and security interests are best met through international cooperation.”