European Ariane-5 rocket completes final launch – BBC News

Ariane-5, Europe’s heavy lift rocket, has flown its last mission.

The vehicle, which supported the continent’s entry into space for nearly three decades, ended its career occupying two telecommunications satellites.

He is generally accepted to have been a very successful pitcher, having suffered only two total outouts in 117 outings.

But the withdrawal of Ariane-5 leaves Europe in a difficult position, with no replacements ready to take over.

The next-generation rocket, Ariane-6, is still in development and testing and may not make its debut until next year.

To complicate matters, Europe can no longer operate Russian Soyuz rockets and its smallest vehicle, the Vega-C, was sidelined following an in-flight failure last December.

The unavailability of home-made rockets prompted the director general of the European Space Agency Josef Aschbacher to recently declare that “Europe is … in a serious launcher crisis”.

The latest mission on Wednesday was conducted, as usual, from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The two “passengers” aboard were a French defense satellite, called Syracuse 4B, and a German demonstration spacecraft, called Heinrich Hertz.

The Ariane departed right at the start of its launch window at 7pm local time (10pm GMT; 11pm BST).

Dr. Aschbacher said the Ariane-5 will be remembered as an extraordinary vehicle.

“The Ariane-5’s performance and accuracy has been quite unique, but I am convinced that Ariane-6 will have the same performance and accuracy once it is on the launch pad,” he told BBC News.

The in-orbit injection was so precise that the observatory did not have to use its own fuel to correct the trajectory, effectively doubling an expected operational lifetime from 10 to 20 years.

A new European heavy rocket has been commissioned because the production cost of the Ariane-5 has become unaffordable in the face of US competition.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has turned the launch market upside down with its reusable Falcons, driving down the price of Ariane.

The Ariane-6 is expected to be at least 40% cheaper than the Ariane-5, but remains an “expendable” design: a new rocket is required for each mission.

Europe is moving towards reusability, but the technologies needed won’t be in service until 2030.

Meanwhile, Musk is introducing even bigger rockets that promise to further reduce launch prices.

The final Ariane-5 flight on Wednesday went uneventfully, with Heinrich Hertz and Syracuse 4B released on a path to geostationary orbit about half an hour after leaving the ground.

Ariane-5 retires after bringing more than 230 satellites into orbit, equivalent to almost 1,000 tons of hardware.

In addition to James Webb, high-profile missions have included the launch of comet chaser Rosetta (2004); the gigantic environmental observatory Envisat (2002); the 20-ton space station freighter, ATV (2008); and, more recently, the European explorer of Jupiter’s moons, Juice (2023).

The rocket was conceived in the 1980s as a way to launch an astronaut shuttle called Hermes. That plan was abandoned due to cost, and the vehicle was commissioned in 1996 exclusively for lofted satellites.

For most of its career, it launched half of all large telecommunications satellites.