Europe’s Ariane 6 Rocket Suffers Anomaly During First Launch

The maiden launch of Europe’s next-generation rocket had been long in the making and was going almost flawlessly until a second-stage anomaly tarnished the debut when the Ariane 6 launch failed.

Ariane 6 was launched on Tuesday After nearly four years of delays and technical glitches, the launch took place at 3:00 pm EST. The rocket performed a flawless liftoff from the European spaceport in French Guiana, achieving the first successful in-orbit separation and ignition of the Vinci upper stage engine. About three hours after liftoff, the European Space Agency (ESA) Announced He said there were “unanticipated results” from the rocket’s maiden flight that would affect the completion of the mission.

The Ariane 6 upper stage was unable to gain altitude due to a malfunction of the auxiliary thruster (APU), which is used to repressurize the tanks and ignite the engines up to four times, it said. Space Policy OnlineAs a result, the rocket’s engines failed to reignite for a third time, and the Ariane 6 upper stage was unable to perform its de-orbit burn. The rocket was scheduled to land in the Pacific Ocean and fall toward Earth to avoid disrupting its Earth’s orbit, but the anomaly means the second stage is still in orbit.

Ariane 6 carried several small satellites and onboard technology demos on its first launch. The rocket was able to perform three payload deployments, but was unable to deploy two of the payloads later in the flight. The remaining payload was a small re-entry capsule that was unable to perform a de-orbit burn due to a rocket anomaly.

The 197-foot (60-meter) rocket was developed by France’s Arianespace. Decommissioned Ariane 5Legendary Rocket Final flight to take place in July 2023This marked the end of 27 years of operation. After this retirement, Europe was left without its own rocket capable of reaching orbit. Cut ties with Russia Following the invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent loss of access to Soyuz rockets, the European market was eagerly awaiting the debut of Ariane 6 to restore launch capabilities and join a new space race.

Ariane 6 was originally scheduled to launch in 2020 but was postponed to late 2022, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and additional technical hurdles encountered during the rocket’s development. The rocket has accumulated a backlog of 30 missions, the majority of which are Delivering Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet satellite Get on track.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Arianespace CEO Stephan Israel assured reporters that the anomaly would not affect the rocket’s future launches. “We remain on track for our second launch of the year,” Israel was quoted as saying. European space flight“It will have no impact on our next launch.”

Despite how reassuring that statement is, considering how long it took for this rocket to finally launch, we’re not entirely convinced by it.

After the first launch, engineers will collect and analyze data about the Ariane 6 launch failure to learn more about what caused the anomaly. “That’s why we were clear from the beginning that there were two aspects,” Arianegroup CEO Martin Thion said at a press conference, according to European Space Flight. “One was to demonstrate the success of the rocket, and that was achieved, and the other was to understand and gather as much information as possible during this microgravity phase.”