At long last, Europe’s eagerly awaited rocket has earned its wings.
At 3 p.m. ET on Tuesday — one decade after the European Space Agency set in motion a plan for a powerful new vehicle that would carry the continent’s ambitions to orbit — Ariane 6 soared away from the launchpad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The debut flight, after years of delays, was met with applause, whoops and cheers by ESA staff watching the liftoff, as it once again grants European nations in-house access to the final frontier.
Ariane 6 reached orbit 18 minutes and 44 seconds after liftoff. Roughly an hour after launch, the rocket deployed a series of satellites, after which the mission was deemed a success. The rocket’s flight will conclude in about another hour.
Europe’s need to get to space — for climate monitoring, navigation satellites and exploration of the moon, Mars and beyond — is growing every year. A rocket built at home guarantees that European missions will be prioritized on their own terms and that the continent’s space program won’t be reliant on the good graces of non-European companies or international partners.
“We really need Ariane 6,” said Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s director of space transportation. With Tuesday’s flight, he added, “Europe is back.”
Before Tuesday, European nations had been without independent access to space since July 2023, when Ariane 5, the vehicle that preceded Ariane 6, flew for the last time. Another smaller ESA rocket, Vega-C, has been grounded since 2022 because of a flight failure.
In the past, many of Europe’s missions flew on Russian Soyuz rockets. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a break in the relationship in 2022, halting European use of Russian launchers.
“Suddenly we were in a crisis, with no access to space,” Tolker-Nielsen said. For the past year, key missions by ESA have flown on SpaceX vehicles, including the agency’s Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, two Galileo navigation system satellites and the Euclid space telescope. Hera, an ESA spacecraft that will visit a pair of asteroids, is scheduled to be carried by SpaceX in the fall.
“When you do not have it, you realize how important it is,” Tolker-Nielsen said of a European-built way of getting to orbit and beyond.
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