Europe’s newest rocket, Ariane 6, completed its first flight successfully on Tuesday carrying satellites into orbit and returned the continent to self-reliant space access. The launch happened at Kourou, Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana at 4pm local time (1900 GMT), after slight delay caused by minor complication detected earlier in the day.
European space officials who were anxious to move forward from recent failures that included a two-year postponement of Ariane 6 development embraced the successful launching. “This is a great day for Europe,” said Josef Aschbacher, Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA) while Philippe Baptiste, President of CNES space agency stated: “Europe is coming back.”
The rocket did not fly exactly according to plan during its final moments but it still managed to deliver microsatellites into orbit which is a major milestone for European Space Program.
Chosen by ESA since 2014, Ariane 6 launches have been capable of putting satellites at geostationary orbits above Earth 36,000 km and deploying satellite constellations at smaller altitudes. The debut had university microsatellites as payload as well as sundry experiments with two atmospheric re-entry capsules
Mission success was far from guaranteed since historically nearly half of inaugural flights for new rockets failed. Nonetheless, the performance of Ariane 6 was satisfactory with first commercial flight expected before year-end.
This comes at a time when competition in the sector is becoming intense with companies like SpaceX increasingly launching rockets.
To make matters worse for Russia’s Soyuz rockets are grounded while Vega-C light launcher collapsed hence lately Europe has found itself without own capacity to put up satellites. Successful Ariane 6 launch is significant progress towards further develop¬ment of European space and it is anticipated that within next years ESA would increase number of launches due to growing market needs in this direction.
