ESA – D Ducros
A little over a week ago, the European Space Agency announced an initiative to study “future space transport solutions”. Originally, the agency paid about 600 600,000 to three companies – Arian Group, Avio and Rocket Factory s Gusberg – to study competitive launch systems after 2030.
The initiative will allow Europe to understand and prepare for the future of space launches, said Daniel Nuancewender, the space agency’s director of space transportation. “It has laid the foundation that can build a future for us beyond Ariane 6 and Vega-C,” he said. “The system concept studies will include services that will prioritize the future needs of Europe’s space programs but also allow them to take into account the needs of the global market.”
The implication is that Europe’s next pay-generation rocket, the Big Ariane 6 Booster and the smaller Vega-C, will meet the continent’s initial needs for the next decade. Both of these new rockets, developed from previous pay generation boosters, will enter the next 12 to 18 months.
However, now there seems to be growing concern in Europe that the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets No. Be competitive in the near future launch market. This is important because while EU member states pay for rocket development, after reaching operational status, these launch programs are expected to become self-sufficient by attracting commercial satellite launches to help pay for these launches.
The economic ministers of France and Italy have now concluded that the launch market has changed dramatically since 2014, when the Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets were first designed. According to a report in Le Figaro According to the newspaper, the ministers believe that the ability of this new European rocket to compete for a commercial opening agreement has deteriorated significantly since then.
The primary reason? SpaceX. Thanks to its reusable, low-cost Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX is able to lower the prices of large commercial satellites that can be elevated by Arian l. While Europe’s Arian vehicles once played an influential role in launching geographic satellites, they have lost. Significant market share since 2001. Also, through its Rideshare program for Falcon for, SpaceX also threatens to take a mission in polar orbit with a Vega-C with a lift capacity of about 1.5 tons.
According to the newspaper report, Europe is now lagging behind SpaceX in other key ways. Due to its partnership with NASA, SpaceX can now launch astronauts. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet is, in fact, a mission expert on the Crew-2 mission due to launch next month. It will likely be among the many European astronauts arriving in space on the SpaceX vehicle. Europe also currently has no answer to the Starlink megacell that SpaceX is preparing to launch – in the capacity to build hundreds of satellites a year or to put them into orbit as affordable as possible.
Because of this, French and Italian ministers are calling on Europe to respond significantly “technologically and industrially” in view of the rise of SpaceX. It is unclear what form this will take, or how quickly European countries will be able to respond.
Moreover, any initiative will be complicated by politics. The origins of the Ariane program are in France, while Vega’s origins are in Italy. Although Germany has no history of owning its own rockets during the European Union era, there are some promising small launch companies, including Rocket Factory s Gusberg, and they may encourage private competition rather than financially support the institutional approach.
