Europe’s heavy-lift rocket Ariane-5 takes off on its final mission

Europe’s long-standing heavy-lift rocket, Ariane-5, embarked on its final mission on Wednesday, concluding a successful career of nearly three decades in facilitating European access to space. The rocket successfully launched two telecommunications satellites into space and experienced only two failures in its 117 missions.

However, the retirement of Ariane-5 has presented a challenge for Europe, as there is currently no immediate replacement ready to take over. The next-generation rocket, Ariane-6, is still in the development and testing phase and is not expected to debut until next year. Complicating matters further, Europe can no longer utilize Russian Soyuz rockets, and its smaller vehicle, the Vega-C, has been grounded following an in-flight failure in December last year.

As a result, European satellites have had to rely on the services of the United States. For instance, the Euclid space telescope, valued at €1.4 billion ($1.52 billion), was recently launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 in Florida.

The absence of indigenous rockets has led to a “launcher crisis” in Europe, as expressed by European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher. The final mission of Ariane-5 on Wednesday took place from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, with a German demonstration spacecraft called Heinrich Hertz and a French defense satellite named Syracuse 4B as its payload.

Dr. Aschbacher acknowledged the Ariane-5’s significant contributions and expressed confidence that the forthcoming Ariane-6 would demonstrate similar performance and accuracy. Notably, the Ariane-5 showcased exceptional precision during the launch of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope in December 2021. The telescope’s orbit injection was so precise that it did not require additional fuel for trajectory correction, effectively doubling its projected operational lifetime.

The introduction of a new heavy-lift rocket in Europe became necessary as the production costs of Ariane-5 became unsustainable due to competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its reusable Falcon rockets, which undercut Ariane’s price point.