2024-07-10 04:22:15
Updated10. July 2024, 06:22
SpaceThe first flight of the Ariane 6 rocket was successful
Four years late, the rocket finally reached space on Tuesday evening. A great success for Europe.
The Ariane 6 event can be viewed on YouTube.
“Europe is back”: Ariane 6 placed a dozen microsatellites into orbit on Tuesday, marking the success of the rocket’s maiden flight and returning autonomous access to space to Europe, despite the failure of the upper stage’s atmospheric re-entry at the end of the mission.
“It is a historic day for the GSE and for Europe,” he welcomed the Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) Joseph Aschbacher, who expressed his “relief”. Similarly at the French National Center for Space Studies (Cnes), Philippe Baptiste, “Europe is back”.
The launch marks the return of Europe’s autonomous access to space but the mission was not perfect at the end of the flight, the rocket went off course. It did not re-enter the upper-level atmosphere, which was to fall back into the Pacific Ocean far from any inhabited land.
This “anomaly” does not destroy the relief of European space officials regarding the success of the main objective: being able to put satellites into orbit.
“It was a great success despite the slight disappointment” at the end of the mission, insisted Walther Pelzer, boss of DLR, the German space agency, the second contributor after France to the Ariane 6 program.
In the big leagues
In the Jupiter room, the mission control tower located 17 kilometers from the launch pad at Kourou in French Guiana, the concern about the possible failure of a flight waiting for four years quickly in a way of relief and applause .
“Nominal drive, trajectory as expected,” announced director of operations, Raymond Boyce, before lighting the upper stage. “Drive calmly,” he then repeated.
Without even waiting for the success of the satellites into orbit, the head of the American NASA Bill Nelson praised X “a huge step forward for @ESA with the launch of the first powerful new generation rocket”.
“Europe can say that it continues to play in the court of the independent great powers,” welcomed the French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire from Toulouse, and Emmanuel Macron congratulated the teams that will leave to they are impossible. “
Despite the numerous ground tests and simulations carried out over the months, there was still an element of risk: historically, almost half of the world’s first rocket launches have been failures, as happened in 1996 for the first Ariane 5, which did not he, however. there were only two failures in 117 shots.
Second flight at the end of the year
To avoid the possible loss of precious commercial satellites, the rocket, whose development was four years late, carried about ten university microsatellites.
It also carried two atmospheric re-entry capsules to be released at the end of the mission to prepare the space cargo ship that ÚOS is trying to equip itself. The departure of the rocket from its trajectory at the end of the flight did not allow this.
Determined in 2014, Ariane 6 will be able to put satellites into geostable orbit, at an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, like Ariane 5, as well as to put constellations into orbit a few hundred kilometers from Earth.
Thus, the upper stage of the rocket has a re-ignited Vinci engine, the main innovation of the launcher. During the flight, he managed to ignite the Vinci twice to bring the upper stage to where he dropped the “cubes”.
But its third ignition to re-enter the atmosphere could not happen due to the unexplained failure at this stage of the auxiliary power unit (APU) of the upper stage, a small engine that serves to adjust the trajectory, which explained. Martin Sion, boss of the rocket manufacturer, Arianegroup.
This final phase of the mission for “Micrography could not be tested on the ground,” he argued.
This Ariane 6 flight was strategic for the Europeans who want to continue to exist in the face of the American giant SpaceX which launches its reusable Falcon 9 rockets about twice a week.
Since the last Ariane flight 5 years ago, the Europeans could no longer put a satellite into orbit by themselves: since the invasion of Ukraine, they no longer have access to the medium Russian Soyuz launcher, which is launched ten years from Guyana, and the other European rocket Vega-C has been grounded since the end of 2022 after an accident.
After this first flight, it will take several months to analyze the data transmitted by the launcher’s multiple sensors. The problem that arose at the end of the mission is not a question of the first “operational” launch at the end of the year with the French military observation satellite CSO-3, which confirmed Stéphane Israel, head of Arianepace, which will operate the launcher. .
The challenge will then be to successfully increase the flights: six are planned for 2025 and eight the following year. Ariane 6 has 29 flights in its order book.
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