Ariane 5 blasts off for final flight amid Europe rocket crisis

Europe's workhorse Ariane 5 rocket has blasted off for a final time after 27 years of launches. A big moment, but which comes at a difficult time for the continent's space adventure faced with delays to next-generation Ariane 6 and Russia withdrawing its rockets. .

The European Ariane-5 heavy rocket lifts off from the Guyanese Space Center in Kourou, French Guyana on 5 July, 2023. AFP - JODY AMIET

The 117th and final flight of the Ariane 5 rocket took place around 2200 GMT on Wednesday from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The launch had been postponed twice. It was originally scheduled on 16 June, but was called off because of problems with pyrotechnical lines in the rocket's booster, which have since been replaced.

Tuesday's launch was then delayed by bad weather.

The Wednesday night flight went off without a hitch, watched by hundreds of spectators, including former French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, and was greeted with applause.

Marie-Anne Clair, the director of the Guiana Space Centre, told French news agency AFP that  Ariane 5's final flight was "charged with emotion" for the teams in Kourou, where the rocket's launches have been party of daily life for nearly three decades.

Dernier décollage, et le spectacle est au rendez-vous 🚀😍 #GénérationAriane5 #Ariane5 #VA261 pic.twitter.com/aapZUYCHrn

— CNES (@CNES) July 5, 2023

The final payload on Ariane 5 is a French military communications satellite and a German communications satellite. 

The satellite "marks a major turning point for our armed forces: better performance and greater resistance to jamming," French Minister of the Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu tweeted. 

French President Emmanuel Macron said Ariane 5 had forever marked the French and European space adventure.

Webb and Juice 

Though it would become a reliable rocket, Ariane 5 had a difficult start. Its maiden flight exploded moments after liftoff in 1996. Its only other such failure came in 2002.

But the rocket would embark on what was ultimately a long string of successful launches. 

Ariane 5 earned such a reputation for reliability that NASA trusted it to launch the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope in late 2021.

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The rocket's second-last launch was in April, blasting the European Space Agency's Juice spacecraft on its way to find out whether Jupiter's icy moons can host alien life.

Daniel Neuenschwander, the ESA's head of human and robotic exploration, said that in commercial terms, Ariane 5 had been "the spearhead of Europe's space activities".

The rocket was able to carry a far bigger load than its predecessor Ariane 4, giving Europe a competitive advantage and allowing the continent to establish itself in the communication satellite market.

'Difficult times' 

While waiting for Ariane 6, whose first launch was initially scheduled for 2020, Europe had been relying on Russia's Soyuz rockets to get heavy-load missions into space.

But Russia withdrew space cooperation with Europe in response to sanctions imposed over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

The number of launches from Kourou fell from 15 in 2021 to six last year.

Another blow came in December, when the first commercial flight of the next-generation Vega C light launcher failed. Last week, another problem was detected in the Vega C's engine, likely pushing its return further into the future. 

The launcher market has been increasingly dominated by billionaire Elon Musk's US firm SpaceX, whose rockets are now blasting off once a week.

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Lacking other options, the ESA was forced to turn to rival SpaceX's Falcon 9 for the successful launch of its Euclid space telescope on Saturday. 

The ESA will also use a SpaceX rocket to launch satellites for the EarthCARE observation mission.

It remains unclear how the agency will launch the next round of satellites for the European Union's Galileo global navigation system.

At the Paris Air Show earlier this month, ESA chief Josef Aschbacher acknowledged that these were "difficult times," adding that everyone was "working intensely" to get Ariane 6 and Vega-C ready. 

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Ariane 6 was unveiled on a launch pad in Kourou earlier this month ahead of an ignition test of its Vulcain 2.1 rocket engine.

Because the new rocket requires less staffing and maintenance, 190 out of 1,600 positions are being cut at the Kourou spaceport.

(with AFP)