Today, Europe regains its independent access to space. After a development plagued with problems and culminating in four years late on the original plans, the European Space AgencyESA for its acronym in English, launches a self-developed rocket again, the first since the retirement of Ariane 5 a year ago. He Ariane 6a rocket of 56 meters tall, as tall as an 18-story building, and with a mass of 540 tonswill be launched from the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana. It is the largest and most powerful rocket developed in Europe and is available in two versions: Ariane 62 and Ariane 64differentiated by the number of solid fuel lateral boosters they have, 2 in the first and 4 in the second. Ariane 62 is the one that will be launched this afternoon.
The launch window planned by ESA starts at 20:00Spanish peninsular time, and ends at midnight, four hours later. The takeoff and flight can be followed via THAT TV and also on their YouTube channel, which you can watch below in this article. The stream will start half an hour before the launch window opens.
The inaugural flight of Ariane 6 will last almost 3 hours in which it will reach a circular orbit 580 kilometers high above the Earth and with it the ESA will demonstrate its ability to put multiple payloads into spaceThis time, there will be several satellites and capsules, including two devices developed in Spain, one of them by students from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.
Against the current trend, the Ariane 6 It is not a reusable rocketbut its upper stage is capable of fire their thrusters several timesmaking it a more suitable launcher for deploying satellite constellations. The two boosters will be released two minutes after liftoff and the upper stage will disintegrate upon re-entry into the atmosphere while the The two reentry capsules will land near Point Nemo in the Pacific Ocean..
Its initial launch was planned for 2020, but first the pandemic and then a series of difficulties ended up delaying its launch for four years and increasing its budget, close to the 4 billion eurosby 20%. They have participated in its development 13 countriesincluding Spain. France has been the main contributor to the project with a 55.6% of the total, while Spain has done so in a 4.7%.
Over the past year and following the retirement of Ariane 5 in July 2023, Europe has been dependent on SpaceX for operations such as putting the space telescope into orbit Euclidbut now it regains the ability to launch satellites and robotic space exploration missions with Ariane 6.
The rocket, counting both the Ariane 62 and 64, already has reserved seats First 30 flights; some will be institutional mission launches, while others have been contracted by private companies. Jeff Bezosthe magnate owner of Amazon, has planned 18 with the Ariane 6 rocket to put its Starlink competitor into orbit, KuiperIf all goes according to plan, ESA will carry out a second launch of an Ariane 6 rocket next December, with the aim of reaching a rate of about ten per year.