Aviation New launch date for European launcher Ariane 6
The launch of the new European launcher Ariane 6, which was canceled at short notice on Monday, is to be rescheduled for Thursday. The new date for the departure of Ariane 6 from the spaceport in Kourou in French Guiana is now March 6.
05.03.2025, 01:57
SDA
The launch is scheduled for 13:24 local time (17:24 CET), explained the French operating company Arianespace on Tuesday night. Prior to this, the technical systems on the ground had been checked again.
Arianespace had justified the last-minute cancellation of the Ariane 6 launch on Monday with an "anomaly on the ground". This had been discovered after the ground teams at the Kourou space center had already given the green light.
Last July, Ariane 6 took off on its maiden flight with 20 microsatellites on board. Towards the end of the flight, however, the rocket deviated from its trajectory. Arianespace later explained that the technical problems had been rectified and that nothing stood in the way of a second flight.
The launch, which is now scheduled for Thursday, will mark the first commercial flight of Ariane 6. The heavy-lift rocket is to launch the CSO-3 military reconnaissance satellite into space - the third and final satellite in a joint program involving several European countries under the leadership of France. The information gathered by the satellite network was to be used to supply Germany, among other countries.
Independence from the USA and Russia
With the new Ariane 6 rocket, Europe wants to become more independent of the USA and Russia in space travel. The predecessor model, Ariane 5, was launched for the last time in June 2023 after 27 years in service. After that, the Europeans were no longer able to independently launch satellites into orbit. Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, they also no longer have access to the Russian Soyuz launch vehicle, which had been launched from Kourou for ten years.
The Ariane 6 project was decided in 2014 and cost 4.5 billion euros. Germany is the second-largest contributor to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Ariane 6 program after France. However, the lucrative launcher business is now dominated by US tech billionaire Elon Musk: Space X, the aerospace company founded by Musk, sends its partially reusable Falcon 9 launch vehicle into space twice a week on average.
