After years of delays, the new European launch vehicle Ariana 6 is expected to take off on its debut flight in the first half of July. The space agency Esa announced this on Tuesday. In November it announced a launch window from mid-June to the end of July this year. Final tests of the rocket are planned at the launch site in Kourou in French Guiana in the next few weeks. According to Esa, it will then be fully refueled for the first time on June 18th and then completely emptied again. The first Ariana 6 is also supposed to bring some payloads into Earth orbit, including the prototype of a transport capsule from the German start-up The Exploration Company.
The rocket follows the Ariana 5, which has completed a total of 117 almost entirely successful flights in more than 25 years. Since the last launch in July last year, Esa no longer has independent access to space. For the Ariana 6 There are already around 25 pre-orders, including 18 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband satellite network. At the Ariane 6, which cost around four billion euros to develop, there were repeated delays. It should actually have been in use since 2020.