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Carrier rocket: New Ariane 6 is scheduled to fly for the first time in July

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launch vehicle
The new Ariane 6 is scheduled to fly for the first time in July

The new Ariane 6 launch vehicle at the European spaceport in French Guiana. photo

© Manuel Pedoussaut/ESA/dpa

Hope for Europe’s space travel: The new Ariane 6 carrier rocket will soon fly into space for the first time. The exact date is still vague.

The new European one is four years late The Ariane 6 carrier rocket took off into space for the first time in July. The first flight is targeted for the first half of the month, as the European Space Agency (Esa), based in Paris, announced on Tuesday. An exact date for the first launch attempt will be announced at the beginning of June. For Europe’s space travel, an end to the crisis in the launch vehicle sector is in sight.

The Ariane 6 is the successor model to the Ariane 5, which was in use from 1996 to summer 2023. It is intended to carry satellites into space for commercial and public clients and is significantly cheaper than its predecessor. The new rocket is intended to make Europe’s space travel more competitive. It was originally scheduled to launch into space in 2020.

The upper stage of the rocket was assembled in the Bremen factory of the space company ArianeGroup. The main stage will be built in the French town of Les Mureaux. The central body for the first flight and the two boosters were recently brought to the launch site at the European spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana and installed there. ArianeGroup boss Martin Sion spoke of a moving experience. A few weeks ago, the rocket’s launch system was comprehensively checked. The first payloads that will fly into space on board Ariane 6 have now also arrived in Kourou.

There are already orders for 28 flights for the new launch vehicle. The first commercial flight of an Ariane 6 is scheduled to take place before the end of 2024. ESA is currently planning to use Ariane 6 at least until the mid-2030s.

The launch of the Ariane 6 is immensely important for Europe’s space travel, because the situation is currently dire with regard to the launch vehicle sector. The last Ariane 5 took off into space last July. Since then, ESA has no longer had its own resources to launch large satellites into space. There are also problems with the lighter satellites: After the Vega C failed to launch on its first commercial flight in December 2022, this rocket will also remain on the ground for the time being. It is scheduled to fly into space for the first time in mid-November.