Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket successfully blasted off for the first time on Tuesday, releasing satellites into orbit and restoring the continent’s independent access to space.
European space efforts have suffered a series of blows, including four years of delays on Ariane 6, that have robbed the continent of its own way to launch missions into space for the past year.
But with the successful inaugural flight of Europe’s most powerful rocket yet, European space chiefs were keen to move on from recent setbacks.
“It’s a historic day for Europe,” European Space Agency head Josef Aschbacher said.
“Europe is back,” announced Philippe Baptiste, head of France’s CNES space agency.
Surrounded by jungle on the South American coast, the rocket launched from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana at 4 p.m. local time (1900 GMT).
The crew in the Jupiter control room, located 17 kilometers from the launch site, portrayed calm.
Then head of operations Raymond Boyce announced, “propulsion nominal,” meaning that the launch was going as planned.
Applause rang out in the room.
Even louder applause came a little over an hour later, when the rocket successfully delivered microsatellites into orbit.
NASA chief Bill Nelson on X welcomed the “giant leap forward” for the ESA.
But Martin Sion, the CEO of the rocket’s manufacturer ArianeGroup, emphasized that “the mission is not yet complete.”
It will only be fully completed when the reusable Vinci engine in the rocket’s upper stage has fallen back into Earth’s atmosphere.
This is expected around three hours after liftoff.
Since the last flight of its workhorse predecessor, Ariane 5, a year ago, Europe has had to rely on rivals such as Elon Musk’s U.S. firm SpaceX.
Ariane 6 will be able to place satellites in geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers (22,369.36 miles) above Earth, as well as satellite constellations a few hundreds of kilometers up.
The first flight was carrying a payload of university microsatellites, various experiments and two atmospheric re-entry capsules that will be jettisoned near the end of the mission.
The last of three ignitions of the Vinci engine will be to shoot the Vinci engine back down into the Pacific Ocean, so it does not contribute to the space debris cluttering Earth’s orbit.
After months of analyzing the rocket’s inaugural launch, a first commercial flight is expected before the end of the year.
The next challenge will be to “successfully ramp up” the number of flights, ESA space transportation director Toni Tolker-Nielsen said.
Six launches are scheduled for next year, and eight for 2026.
