The page is turned. After 27 years of service and two postponements of its last flight, the Ariane 5 rocket failed on Wednesday evening in Kourou, French Guiana, sending French and German satellites into orbit.
Ariane 5 successfully took off at 19:00 local time (22:00 GMT) from the Guiana Space Center to Kourou, the third time was successful after two postponements: on June 16 for technical reasons, then on July 4 due to weather. .
A French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and a German experimental satellite separated from the launch vehicle about thirty minutes later and were placed into orbit.
The first delay was due to “inconsistencies” in the control lines associated with the separation of the boosters from the rocket. As for the second, it was caused by “adverse high-altitude wind” over the Space Center, causing a 24-hour delay.
On Wednesday night, the latest launch of Ariane 5 was uneventful in front of hundreds of on-site spectators, including local officials and former French justice minister Christian Taubira.
Joy erupted from some employees after the successful take-off, and the second division was greeted with applause.
The launch of the French satellite “marks a major turning point for our armies: increased performance and increased resistance to jamming,” French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu tweeted.
“The tip of Europe in space”
It was the 117th flight of the rocket, which was not easy to launch: it exploded immediately after launch on its first flight in 1996. Then the device suffered another failure, in 2002. “It took two years to get back into flight.” – recalled the technical director of the general contractor ArianeGroup Hervé Gilibert.
The rest of the story is a chain of successes: Ariane 5 has developed a reputation for being a reliable spacecraft, to the point that NASA has even entrusted it with its famous $10 billion James Webb telescope. The successful launch on Christmas Day 2021 marks an apotheosis for whoever sent the Rosetta probes to comet Churi (2004) and Juice probes to Jupiter in April 2023.
Twelve countries were involved in the production of this heavy launch vehicle, “the spearhead of space Europe,” according to Daniel Neuenschwander, former director of space transport at the European Space Agency (ESA).
With twice the starting power compared to Ariane 4, the fifth name allows Europe to impose itself on the satellite market, taking advantage of the “trough” on the American side. The situation has changed since then.
This farewell Ariane 5 flight will be followed by long months of emptiness in anticipation of the future N.6 – late 2023 at best – whose deployment suffers from cumulative delays.
More powerful and more competitive at half the cost of Ariane 5, Ariane 6 was designed to take on Elon Musk’s US company SpaceX, which has more than one launch per week.
Tests for his qualifications are in full swing, but there is a gloomy atmosphere in Kuru. The cessation of work on the Ariane 5 will result in 190 job cuts out of 1,600 as the new missile requires less manpower and maintenance requirements.
Source: Le Parisien
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