2023-07-06 09:35:34
A page turns. After 27 years of service and two postponements of its final flight, the Ariane 5 rocket bowed out on Wednesday evening in Kourou, French Guiana, by sending a French and a German satellite into orbit.
Ariane 5 took off successfully at 7:00 p.m. local time (22:00 GMT) from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, the third time being the good one after two postponements: June 16 for a technical reason then July 4 because of the weather.
The French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and the German experimental satellite separated from the launcher after about thirty minutes to be placed in orbit.
The first postponement was due to “non-conformities” on the control lines involved in the separation of the boosters from the rocket. As for the second, it had been caused by “adverse high-altitude winds” over the Space Center, causing a 24-hour delay.
On Wednesday evening, the final launch of Ariane 5 took place without incident under the eyes of hundreds of spectators gathered on site, including local officials and the former French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira.
Some collaborators let their joy burst after the successful takeoff, while applause greeted the second separation.
Success of the last flight of the Ariane 5 rocket!
It puts the Syracuse 4B military communication satellite into orbit, which marks a major turning point for our armies: better performance and better resistance to interference. pic.twitter.com/RLjTxqpaQj
— Sebastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) July 5, 2023
The putting into orbit of the French satellite “marks a major turning point for our armies: better performance and better resistance to interference”, welcomed the French Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, on Twitter.
“Spearhead of Europe in space”
It was the 117th flight for the rocket, which had a rocky start: it exploded just after liftoff on its maiden flight in 1996. The device then suffered only one more failure, in 2002 “It took two years to get back in flight,” recalled the technical director of the ArianeGroup prime contractor, Hervé Gilibert.
The rest of the story is a chain of successes, Ariane 5 forging a reputation for reliability such that NASA even entrusts it with its emblematic James Webb telescope, worth ten billion dollars. The successful launch on Christmas Day in 2021 marks the apotheosis for the one who sent the Rosetta probes to comet Tchouri (2004) and Juice to Jupiter in April 2023.
Twelve countries participated in the manufacture of this heavy launcher, “the spearhead of space Europe”, in the words of Daniel Neuenschwander, former director of space transport for the European Space Agency (ESA).
With a launch capacity doubled compared to Ariane 4, the fifth of the name allows Europe to impose itself on the satellite market, taking advantage of a “trough” on the American side. A situation reversed since.
This farewell flight of Ariane 5 will be followed by long months of emptiness while waiting for the future N.6 – at best at the end of 2023 – whose deployment is suffering from cumulative delays.
More powerful and more competitive with costs halved compared to Ariane 5, Ariane 6 was designed to withstand Elon Musk’s American company SpaceX, which carries out more than one launch per week.
The tests for his qualification are in full swing, but the atmosphere is gloomy in Kourou. The end of Ariane 5 will lead to 190 job cuts out of 1,600, the new rocket having reduced labor and maintenance requirements.
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