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SPACEFLIGHT

Europe’s Long Awaited Ariane 6

Rocket Suffers Anomaly During Its
Debut Flight
The rocket's second stage failed to raise its altitude, preventing two of its payloads from being
deployed successfully.

By Passant Rabie
Published July 10, 2024 | Comments (8)

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The Ariane 6 rocket launching from the European Spaceport in French Guiana © ESA

The inaugural launch of Europe’s next-gen rocket has been a long time in the
making, and it almost went by without a hitch until a second stage anomaly
caused an Ariane 6 launch failure, marring its debut.

Ariane 6 lifted off on Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET, following nearly four years of delays
and technical hiccups. The rocket performed a flawless launch from Europe’s
spaceport in French Guiana, pulling off a stage separation and the ignition of the
Vinci upper stage engine in orbit for the first time. Around three hours after
launch, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that there was an
“unexpected result” with the rocket’s first flight, which would affect the end of
the mission.

Ariane 6’s upper stage failed to raise its altitude due to the failure of an Auxiliary
Propulsion Unit (APU), which is used to repressurize the tanks and allow the
engine to fire up to four times, according to SpacePolicyOnline.com. As a result,
the rocket’s engine failed to reignite a third time, preventing the Ariane 6 upper
stage from performing a deorbit burn. The rocket was supposed to fall back
towards Earth, landing in the Pacific Ocean to prevent it from cluttering Earth’s
orbit. Due to the anomaly, however, the second stage is still in orbit.

For its debut launch, Ariane 6 carried a few small satellites and onboard tech
demos. The rocket was able to carry out three payload deployments but failed to
deploy two of its payloads later in the flight. The remaining payloads were small
reentry capsules that failed to perform their own deorbit burn due to the rocket’s
anomaly.

The 197-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket, developed by French company Arianespace,

is meant to serve as a successor to the now-retired Ariane 5. The legendary
rocket performed its final flight in July 2023, ending a 27-year run. Following its
retirement, Europe had no rocket of its own to reach orbit. After cutting ties with
Russia following its invasion of Ukraine and subsequently losing access to Soyuz
rockets, the European market has been anxiously waiting for the debut of Ariane
6 to restore its launch capabilities and join the new space race.

Ariane 6 was initially supposed to lift off in 2020, but it was later rescheduled to
late 2022, mainly due to the covid-19 pandemic and additional technical hurdles
encountered during the rocket’s development. The rocket has accumulated a
backlog of 30 missions, the majority of which will be to deliver Amazon’s Project
Kuiper’s internet satellites to orbit.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Arianespace CEO Stephane Israel

reassured reporters that the anomaly would not affect the rocket’s upcoming
launches. “We are perfectly on track now to make the second launch this year,”
Israel is quoted as saying in European Spaceflight. “It has no consequence on
the next launches.”

Considering how long it took for this rocket to finally launch, we’re not entirely
convinced by that statement, despite how reassuring it sounds.

Following its debut launch, engineers will gather data from the Ariane 6 launch
failure for analysis and dig deeper into what may have caused the anomaly.
“This is why, from the beginning, we were very clear on the fact that there were
two aspects,” ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion said during the press conference,
according to European Spaceflight. “One was to demonstrate the launcher’s
success, which we did. And then to understand and to and gather as much
information as possible in this microgravity phase.”

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# ARIANE 6 # ARIANESPACE # ESA # ROCKET LAUNCH # ROCKET LAUNCH FAILURES

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A6 Ariane 6
11 July, 2024
Not surprising how Europeans and Americans are covering this news. It is a failure for Americans. It is a
success for Europeans. It is all good. Diversify your source of information, and don't stick to the
headlines.
(Edited)
Reply · 9 2 · Share

1 reply

Apocalypse Cow
11 July, 2024
Um ... "launch failure"??

As you yourself describe it, the launch was flawless, so a bit confusing why you keep choosing to call it a
failure ...

At any rate, the maiden flight of completely new hardware which actually performed really, really well
overall. Grats to ESA =)
Reply · 12 6 · Share

M Matt
11 July, 2024
Outside of test flights, Launches that fail to deliver the payloads (Purpose of the Launch) to proper
orbits are failures. I guess you can have a participation trophy for this one if you want it. It proved a lot
went right but not everything. Better luck next time!
(Edited)
Reply · 6 2 · Share

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