GoKawiilIn the two years since it made a largely successful debut, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket has launched eight missions, all of which reached orbit safely.
The large, expendable rocket has a capacity of more than 20 metric tons to low-Earth orbit. And to the credit of European rocket scientists and planners, the Ariane 6 has had a substantially smoother rollout than comparable vehicles in the United States—Blue Origin’s New Glenn and United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rockets—both of which have had significant growing pains.
However, even though the Ariane 6 rocket has had a successful debut, its future is clouded by high costs.
Block 3 put on ice
On Thursday, European Spaceflight reported that “Block 3” upgrades for the Ariane 6 rocket have been shelved by the European Space Agency. A key element of the “Block 3” evolution of Ariane 6 was the lightweight ICARUS upper stage, which would have used carbon-composite structures.
The cancellation of this upgrade has implications for some of the European Space Agency’s science missions, including a probe to Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
Perhaps the bigger question is what the cancellation of future versions of the Ariane 6 rocket tells us about the program’s future. In some ways, the vehicle has been a tremendous success. It has provided the continent reliable access to orbit for its most important satellites when the war in Ukraine pushed Europe to end its use of Russian rockets and ended Europe’s need to launch on SpaceX rockets owned by Elon Musk.
However, the fact that the European ministers who provide funding for Ariane 6 balked at these upgrades may indicate growing impatience with the rocket’s cost.
Arianespace hasn’t publicly disclosed the cost of an Ariane 6 launch, but it is likely somewhere in the range of 80 million to 100 million euros. The rocket has a number of European customers but also a major US corporation, Amazon, which contracted for 18 launches to get its Amazon Leo constellation into space. Three Amazon flights have occurred so far, all this year.