Europe Faces Launcher Crisis as Last Ariane 5 Rocket Launches
On Tuesday, July 4, the last Ariane 5 rocket will take off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, leaving Europe without a heavy-lift rocket for the first time in decades. With no reusable rocket in sight, Europe’s domestic rocketry business, ArianeGroup, will have to purchase launches from US-based SpaceX until the first Ariane 6 rocket is expected to arrive at the end of this year.
Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, warned in May that Europe is experiencing an acute launcher crisis with a temporary gap in its own access to space and no clear vision for a launcher beyond 2030.
The Ariane 5 has been Europe’s workhorse for orbital delivery for nearly 30 years, with a success rate of over 95 percent. It has had 111 successful launches out of a total of 116. NASA even chose the Ariane 5 as the vehicle to deliver the James Webb Space Telescope nearly a million miles from Earth.
However, the Ariane 5 is expensive to launch, slow to set up, and can only be used once. In contrast, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been successful in launching over 180 rockets since 2018, often retrieving and reusing the first stage of the booster, significantly reducing costs.
“SpaceX has undeniably changed the launcher market paradigm as we know it,” Aschbacher said.
Meanwhile, ArianeSpace’s other rocket, the lightweight Vega-C, remains grounded after a launch failure in December 2022. As a result, ESA has started using SpaceX’s rockets for its missions, and the EU is reportedly seeking a contract with SpaceX to bridge the gap in service caused by the launcher crisis.
The Ariane 6 rocket, which has been in development for around a decade, is expected to be a reliable workhorse once ready. It already has 25 planned payloads, but there is still a long way to go before it matches the success of the Ariane 5. Unlike SpaceX’s reusable rockets, the Ariane 6 is a single-use vehicle.
ArianeSpace is also developing a reusable spacecraft called Susie, which will sit atop the Ariane 6. Susie is designed to deliver cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station and lunar orbit to support the Moon mission. However, there is still significant development required before Susie can carry out crewed missions.
While the Ariane 5 has had an impressive career in the market for orbital delivery, its successor, the Ariane 6, faces a more challenging path. Europe’s launcher crisis and the rise of SpaceX’s reusable rockets are reshaping the landscape of commercial space exploration.