Will Europe find its way back to space, after having lost it nine months earlier? This question will be answered on Tuesday, July 9, at 8 pm Paris time and 3 pm in Kourou, French Guiana. At that time, the Guiana Space Center will have a three-hour launch window to test out the new Ariane-6 rocket. This program, initiated in December 2014 by the European Space Agency (ESA), will finally conclude, albeit four years behind schedule. Its initial aim was to respond to Elon Musk's offensive, which, with his SpaceX company, had slashed launch prices by more than 40%, to around $60 million. The new entrant had put an end to the European-Russian duopoly, formed by Ariane and Proton, by changing the market's fundamental principles: Rather than high prices, which were justified by flight safety, the American billionaire proposed "low-cost" missions enabled by his Falcon-9 rockets. He succeeded and rapidly gained a strong position in the launch vehicle market.
The Europeans set a six-year deadline to develop Ariane-6, which would be more flexible in use and, above all, half the price of Ariane-5, so as to be competitive with the great American rival. The inaugural flight had been scheduled for July 21, 2020, the date on which man first set foot on the Moon, during the Apollo-11 mission in 1969. However, with the first technical setbacks, this date was soon ruled out. As the Covid-19 pandemic then made the situation worse in 2020, a new deadline was set for the end of 2021, which was also postponed by several months.
Then, in the spring of 2022, further difficulties led to the schedule being pushed back. All this against a backdrop of tension between France and Germany, the two main contributors to the project, with stakes of 55.3% and 22% respectively. Berlin blamed Paris for the program's poor performance and cost overruns. A financial agreement between the countries was finally reached in Seville, Spain, at an ESA summit on November 6 and 7, 2023, and they pledged to ensure the launch vehicle's long-term viability by booking four flights a year for their institutional, military or scientific needs, out of the 10 or so flights that Ariane-6 is expected to carry out each year.
As a result of these successive delays, the planned overlap between the last Ariane-5 flight, in July 2023, and the first Ariane-6 flight could not take place, depriving Europe of a heavy-life launch vehicle for a year. As for the small Vega rocket, its last launch took place in October 2023, and the program for the next model, Vega-C, was suspended after an in-flight malfunction. Since then, Europe has found itself lacking access to space.
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