Final Launch of Ariane 5 Amidst Rocket Crisis in Europe

Europe’s reliable Ariane 5 rocket took its final flight on Wednesday, bidding farewell after 27 years of successful launches. However, this comes at a challenging time for European space efforts. Faced with intense global competition, Europe currently lacks an independent solution for launching heavy missions into space due to delays in the development of the next-generation Ariane 6 rocket and Russia’s withdrawal of its rockets.

The 117th and last launch of the Ariane 5 rocket occurred at around 2200 GMT on Wednesday from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launch had been postponed twice, first due to problems with pyrotechnical lines and then due to adverse weather conditions.

The farewell flight of Ariane 5 was a poignant moment for the teams in Kourou, where rocket launches have been a part of daily life for nearly three decades, according to Marie-Anne Clair, the director of the Guiana Space Centre.

The final payload on Ariane 5 consisted of a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite. French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sebastien Lecornu, commented that the satellite represented a significant milestone for the armed forces, offering improved performance and greater resilience against jamming.

Although Ariane 5 faced initial setbacks, including an explosion during its maiden flight in 1996 and another failure in 2002, it eventually became a highly reliable rocket. The early challenges had a positive effect, instilling a culture of vigilance among the engineering teams involved.

Webb and Juice

Ariane 5 gained a reputation for reliability that led NASA to entrust it with launching the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope later in 2021. Its second-to-last launch carried the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft on a mission to investigate the potential for alien life on Jupiter’s icy moons.

However, with the delays in Ariane 6’s development and Russia’s withdrawal of space cooperation, Europe has had to rely on other options. Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX has emerged as a dominant force in the launcher market, launching rockets once a week. The European Space Agency (ESA) had to turn to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for the successful launch of its Euclid space telescope and will also use SpaceX rockets for the EarthCARE observation mission. The launch plan for the European Union’s Galileo global navigation system remains uncertain.

The ESA is diligently working on preparing Ariane 6 and Vega-C, hoping to regain Europe’s independent launch capability. Ariane 6 was recently unveiled on a launch pad in Kourou for an ignition test of its Vulcain 2.1 rocket engine. However, personnel reductions have already begun at the Kourou spaceport in anticipation of the new rocket’s streamlined staffing and maintenance requirements.