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The European Space Agency’s (ESA) next-generation heavy-lift rocket is just months away from its first flight, and its main components are already being assembled for launch at the Vehicle Assembly Building in Kourou, French Guiana.
The new rocket is the European upgrade of the retired Ariane 5, which last flew in 2023. With a large payload and lifting capacity, the Ariane 6 will be able to carry very heavy satellites (or several smaller ones). Ariane 6’s heavy lift capability is achieved using Hydrolox engines in both the first and second stages, assisted by up to four solid rocket boosters, allowing it to carry up to 11,000 kg to geostationary transfer orbit.
The Ariane 6 upper stage has the ability to reignite its engine multiple times, giving it a lot of flexibility in the types of missions it can carry out and improving the precision of the orbits it can reach. That makes it useful for both interplanetary missions and unique orbital requirements around Earth.
What it won’t be is reusable.
Ariane 6 is an expendable rocket, leading critics to question whether it can keep pace with notable competitors seeking reusability like SpaceX. But Ariane 6 has different capabilities and caters to different launch parameters than SpaceX, giving it market share that the Falcon Heavy is not prepared for. Perhaps most importantly, independent access to space is a priority for Europe, making Ariane 6 a strategic imperative as well as a technological or competitive breakthrough. Still, the Ariane 6 may not remain ESA’s workhorse in the long term: they are already investigating reusable alternatives that should appear on the scene in the 2030s.
Rocket stages are not the only place where ESA can make environmentally and budget-friendly innovations, and some changes are now coming. The logistics and support infrastructure for Ariane 6, for example, includes shipping the rocket stages aboard the canopya wind-assisted hybrid cargo ship that can reduce emissions by more than 20% (up to 30% depending on its speed) compared to a conventionally powered ship.
Canopée delivered the first Ariane 6 to Kourou last month, arriving at the port after a 10-day, 7,000-kilometer journey from continental Europe in February.
The rocket now being prepared to fly inside the vehicle assembly building will be placed vertically on the pad in the coming months.
The first flight of Ariane 6 is scheduled for no earlier than June 15. It will carry out a rideshare mission that will put several small spacecraft into orbit.
After that, the vehicle will have a constant launch cadence, with a series of flights scheduled for 2025 to carry upgraded satellites for the European Galileo constellation (a standalone GPS system). There are also plans to launch several deep space missions in the coming years, including ESA’s PLATO exoplanet hunting telescope, components of the Mars Sample Return infrastructure, and ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission.