Despite the health crisis, Arianespace ended 2020 with one more mission on the clock, with ten launches in total, compared to 2019. This, despite the halt in launch campaigns at the Guyanese space center in Kourou, for two months due to Covid-19.
Read also: Arianespace takes over OneWeb missions by the end of 2020
The French space services company could have done much better if some of the planned satellites had been there.
But the OneWeb bankruptcy last spring called everything into question.
Since then, the constellation has been taken over by a tandem associating the British state with the Indian telecoms group Bharti and the firing resumed late last year.
70% of geostationary satellite launches
Another source of satisfaction for the Arianespace teams, the company was the market leader in geostationary satellites (36,000 km from Earth).
"
We launched 70% of all satellites put into orbit in 2020, or seven. At the same time, SpaceX launched two and China only one, a mission that ended in failure,
" explains Stéphane Israël , president of Arianespace.
The company also launched 166 satellites, ranging from 250 grams to 6.5 tonnes, reflecting the rise of constellations.
"
Of this total, 75% were dedicated to the telecoms market and 15% to Earth observation, which clearly shows the market trend
", underlines the president of Arianespace, for whom "
2020 was the year of constellation
s ”.
In 2020, SpaceX has stepped up missions to continue the deployment of Starlink.
Last year, Arianespace stood out with 92% of launches carried out on behalf of commercial customers.
This, while 83 of the 114 orbiting missions identified in the world in 2020 were carried out on behalf of institutions (government, army, public bodies).
“
It's a specificity of Arianespace,
” underlined Stéphane Israël.
This is why he is delighted that, "
for the first time in European space history
", the European Space Agency and the Commission sign, in 2021, a framework agreement for a joint order for launches for Galileo, the GPS European, and Copernicus (Earth observation).
A global contract which gives visibility and which would be "
of the order of one billion euros
", recalled the president of Arianespace.
Future European sovereign constellation
2021 should also allow Europe to make progress in the field of constellations.
Arianespace is participating, alongside eight other players in the European space industry, in an initial feasibility study for a future European constellation.
This, with a view to launching a program just as structuring and emblematic as Galileo and Copernicus.
Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market, also in charge of space, has been campaigning for months for Europe to acquire a sovereign constellation that would make it possible to secure, in the cloud, the data of European companies, agencies and states. , and launch internet services for all.
The program, which could be launched in the mid-2020s for commissioning before the end of the decade, would be funded through a public-private partnership.
Welcoming the "
mobilization
" in Europe in favor of the space industry, the president of Arianespace recalls that the United States devoted 52 billion dollars to their industry last year, ie five times more than the old continent.
And that they have made a comeback in manned flights with the Crew Dragon, the capsule developed by SpaceX, which continued the deployment of its Starlink constellation.
In 2021, the major emblematic mission for Arianespace will be the launch of the James-Webb space telescope, a hundred times more powerful than Hubble, on behalf of NASA and ESA, its European counterpart.
This mission is scheduled for the end of October 2021.
To read also: Thierry Breton: "We must ensure the digital sovereignty of Europe"
Arianespace also intends to carry out at least one mission per month on behalf of OneWeb if the satellites are ready.
The company will also have to succeed this year in the return to flight of Vega whose last mission was a failure, "
this before the end of next March".
2021 will also be the year of the first flight of Vega C, successor to Vega, and of the continued preparations for the inaugural flight of Ariane 6 in the second quarter of 2022.
In total, this year, Arianespace plans to carry out "
more missions than in 2020
" up to fifteen, which would be a record.
