A page is turning. After 27 years of service and two postponements of its final flight, the Ariane 5 rocket bowed out Wednesday evening in Kourou, French Guiana, sending into orbit a French satellite and a German one.
Ariane 5 successfully took off at 19:00 local time (22:00 GMT) from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, the third time being the right one after two postponements: on June 16 for a technical reason and July 4 because of the weather.
📷 Pics now coming in of #Ariane5 VA261 launch... courtesy of ESA photographer S. Corvaja 👍 pic.twitter.com/ppT2F1q0QH
— ESA (@esa) July 5, 2023
The French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and the German experimental satellite separated from the launcher after about thirty minutes to be placed in orbit.
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The first postponement was due to "non-conformities" on the command lines involved in the separation of the boosters from the rocket. As for the second, it was caused by "adverse high-altitude winds" over the Space Center, resulting in a delay of 24 hours.
On Wednesday evening, the final launch of Ariane 5 took place smoothly under the eyes of hundreds of spectators gathered on site, including local officials and the former French Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira.
Some employees let out their joy after the successful take-off, while applause greeted the second separation.
Success of the last flight of the Ariane 5 rocket!
It puts into orbit the military communication satellite Syracuse 4B, which marks a major turning point for our armed forces: better performance and better resistance to interference. pic.twitter.com/RLjTxqpaQj
— Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) July 5, 2023
The launch of the French satellite "marks a major turning point for our armies: better performance and better resistance to interference," said French Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu on Twitter.
"Spearhead of Europe in space"
It was the rocket's 117th flight, which had a rough start: it exploded just after takeoff on its maiden flight in 1996. The aircraft then suffered only one other failure, in 2002. "It took us two years to get back in the air," said Hervé Gilibert, technical director of the prime contractor ArianeGroup.
The rest of the story is a series of successes, Ariane 5 forging a reputation for reliability such that NASA even entrusts it with its emblematic James Webb telescope, worth ten billion dollars. The successful launch on Christmas Day in 2021 marks the apotheosis for the one that sent the Rosetta probes to Comet Churi (2004) and Juice to Jupiter, in April 2023.
Twelve countries participated in the manufacture of this heavy launcher, "the spearhead of Europe in space", in the words of Daniel Neuenschwander, former director of space transport of the European Space Agency (ESA).
With a launch capacity doubled compared to Ariane 4, the fifth of the name allows Europe to impose itself on the satellite market, taking advantage of a "low" on the American side. A situation reversed since.
This farewell flight of Ariane 5 will be followed by long months of vacuum while waiting for the future N.6 - at best at the end of 2023 - whose deployment suffers from cumulative delays.
More powerful and competitive with costs halved compared to Ariane 5, Ariane 6 was designed to withstand Elon Musk's American company SpaceX, which carries out more than one launch per week.
Testing for his qualification is in full swing, but the atmosphere is gloomy in Kourou. The end of Ariane 5 will lead to 190 job cuts out of 1,600, the new rocket having reduced needs in manpower and maintenance.