Despite the revival of Ariane, Europe's space challenge remains immense

Europe has found its way back to space. On August 12, Ariane-6 successfully completed its second commercial flight , five months after the one on March 6. This is the third consecutive success for the new European rocket, if we add its maiden flight in July 2024. The launch pace will be able to accelerate. According to the initial program, three more launches should take place by the end of the year, with the objective of reaching a cruising rate of nine to ten annual launches by 2027, twice the maximum capacity of Ariane-5, the previous generation rocket retired in July 2023. Orders are already in: 32 flights have been booked by satellite operators with Arianespace, the operator of the launcher manufactured by ArianeGroup (a 50-50 subsidiary of the manufacturers Airbus and Safran).

For Europe, Ariane's revival is a relief. The program's four-year delay, coupled with the failure at the end of 2022 of the first commercial flight of the Italian Vega-C rocket, manufactured by Avio, deprived it of sovereign access to space for nearly a year, making it dependent on SpaceX, Elon Musk's company, the all-powerful market leader. At the same time, the Russian Soyuz launcher, which took off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou and was used by numerous satellite operators, became unusable due to the aggression against Ukraine in February 2022.

In 2024, the United States carried out 156 launches, including 132 by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, or one takeoff every two days. China followed (68 flights), Russia (17) and Japan (7). With its three launches ( two for Vega and one for Ariane 6), Europe was only in seventh place, behind India (5) and Iran (4). A slight, given that the Old Continent had become accustomed to dominating the space industry at the beginning of the millennium with Ariane-5 (twenty-seven years of existence, 117 launches, including more than 80 consecutive successes).

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