ESA – D Ducros
European space officials announced late last week that the launch of the Ariane 6 rocket would be delayed again – this time until the second quarter of 2022.
The giant rocket, which has a lift capacity almost comparable to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster, was originally scheduled to launch before the end of 2020. In May of this year, citing the COVID-19 epidemic, the European Space Agency acknowledged that the launch would slip in 2021.
Now, during a teleconference with reporters, European officials said they are targeting the first Area 6 flight from April 2022 to June 2022. Again, they cite the global epidemic that has affected both development facilities in Europe and activities at the rocket launch site in French Guiana. “We can say today that COVID-19 has led to an increase in activity on the critical route,” said Daniel Nuancewander, director of space transportation at the European Space Agency.
However, Nuancewand also acknowledged that rockets face technical problems. The upper phase of the rocket has an auxiliary power unit, designed to insert satellites into geostationary orbit directly from the orbit of transit. But this is a new element, Neuvenswender said, and he’s not quite ready. Development teams are still working on cryogenic weapons that attach pads and rockets to the launch site.
This delay will come with increased costs. European member states will be asked to contribute an additional 23 230 million (27 270 million) for the full development of the Ariane 6 rocket, said Jan Werner, director general of the Nunswander and the European Space Agency. Including these funds, the development of the Ariane 6 rocket will cost about 8 .8 billion ($. જ 3 billion), including a new launch site in French Guiana. Recent reports from the French Itor Dieter, however, do not guarantee funding.
This is a lot of money to develop a rocket. However, only a quarter of what NASA has spent on recent major rocket projects, such as still flying, or the Ares Eye Booster, which did a single test flight before the cancellation, remains. .
But the purpose of any of these rockets was to become competitive in the commercial market by launching payloads for very small countries for private satellite companies or their own launching programs. Two years ago, European officials told Arsen that the Ariane 6 rocket was the “best answer to increase competition for the commercial satellite launch” of the continent. For a long time, Europe and Russia dominated this area of industry, but SpaceX has peeled off many of these communications satellite missions with its low-cost Falcon 9 rocket.
In response to this competition, Arian 6 was designed to make flying more cost effective. Originally, the European Space Agency has so far planned to launch the Ariane 6 rocket. Although the rocket may cost more than the Falcon 9, it had the ability to deliver two large satellites into geostationary orbit and would have several decades of launch reliability behind it. A few years ago, this seemed like a plausible argument.
However, since 2018, SpaceX has made significant progress with its Falcon 9 booster. The Blue Block C5 version of the SpaceX rocket now ranks as the world’s most reliable launcher with the Atlas V booster and flies more often than any other rocket. Moreover, as SpaceX continues to prove reusable, it could outperform other similarly sized rockets at that price. Meanwhile, the Ariane 6 rocket is set to launch in 2022, and there is no guarantee from potential customers that it will be ready to fly by then.
The Ariane 6 will be Europe’s main heavy-lift rocket, so it will always have a baseline of institutional customers. This is because ESA and member countries have satellites that they do not want to rely on a foreign country. However, the difference between making a profit in Europe’s rocket industry or the need for significant subsidies to continue is based on Ariane 6’s ability to dodge a commercial satellite launch. The forecast is less sunny compared to 2018.
