European Space Agency to hitch ride on SpaceX rockets

The European Space Agency is having trouble with the latest generation of Ariane rockets, which will not get off the ground before late 2023. The delay means the European effort to compete with Elon Musk's cut-price SpaceX launcher is losing altitude. In fact, ESA on Thursday announced plans to use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets to launch two scientific missions.

The Ariane 5 rocket with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope onboard on December 23, 2021, at the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. AFP - BILL INGALLS

The inaugural flight of the Ariane 6 rocket has been beset by a long series of delays.

ESA director general Josef Aschbacher has, once again, been obliged to backpedal on the project, originally scheduled for launch on 21 July 2020, the anniversary of the first Moonwalk in 1969.

Ariane 6 has been developed with a view to being 40 or 50 percent cheaper than Ariane 5, a level of economy imposed by the entry into the satellite launch market of Elon Musk's SpaceX.

The US billionaire offers to put satellites into orbit at prices 40 percent lower than those proposed by the European Space Agency (ESA) or the Russian Proton programme.

Since last Monday, a fully assembled Ariane 6 has been standing on the launch pad at Kourou in French Guiana. But it will never take off. This particular model was built to test communication and fuel systems. The results of those and other tests will determine whether the "late 2023" launch date is feasible.

The cost of the project was originally estimated at four billion euros, finaced by European states who are memebers of the ESA.

Budget-busting behemoths

The budget is 600 million euros in the red, with Europe having agreed a bail out of 400 million. The remaining 200 million euros will have to be found before the next meeting of the ESA, scheduled for November.

Another aspect of the problem for Europe is that there only three Ariane 5s left in stock, one due for launch later this year, the others in the first half of 2023.

The Russian team left Guiana in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, taking their Soyuz lanchers with them. That means that Europe has no vehicle sufficiently powerful to put a satellite into geostationary orbit, 36,000 kms from the earth's surface.

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As a result, at least five crucial European satellite missions are gathering dust. It is strategically difficult to imagine such projects, two of which are for the French armed forces, being handed over to SpaceX.

But if Ariane 6 should fall victim to further delays, Paris may have no choice.

The ESA has already had to pay rival Musk to put part of the Euclid telescope in orbit. OneWeb, which boasts the "world's mostr advanced internet system," has also decided to use SpaceX, as have the Indian NewSpace network, currently using the American vehicles to install a constellation of satellites.

Ariane 6 rockets are scheduled to power 33 missions before the end of 2026. The global market for launch platforms is estimated at three billion euros each year.