Europe’s first Ariane 6 flight achieved most of its goals, but ended prematurely

The first European Ariane 6 rocket fired off its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and climbed into orbit Tuesday, an inaugural flight a decade in the making that restored Europe's ability to put its own large satellites into space.

The debut of the Ariane 6 rocket came almost exactly one year after Europe's previous workhorse rocket, the Ariane 5, flew for the final time. Running four years late, the Ariane 6 is set to become Europe's next flagship launcher. But delays in its development, combined with other factors, forced European governments to pay SpaceX to deliver several payloads to orbit.

With Tuesday's test flight, European space officials hope those days are behind them. The European Space Agency paid more than $4 billion to get the Ariane 6 rocket to this point, with the goal of replacing the Ariane 5 with a cheaper, more capable launcher. There are still pressing questions about Ariane 6's cost per launch, and whether the rocket will ever be able to meet its price target and compete with SpaceX and other companies in the commercial market.

As Ariane 6 transitions to commercial operations, ESA member states have agreed to continue propping up the program with hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies per year. The Ariane 6 rocket is expendable, and is one of only a few launchers of its size worldwide without at least a roadmap to evolve into a partially reusable vehicle.

But for ESA, with a core policy of ensuring European satellites can ride to space on European rockets, getting Ariane 6 to the finish line is reason to celebrate.

“Europe is back," said Josef Aschbacher, ESA's director general. "This powers Europe back into space.”

Successful liftoff

The first Ariane 6 launcher lifted off from the European-run Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, at 3 pm EDT (19:00 UTC), an hour later than originally planned after preparations fell behind schedule earlier in the day.

The countdown clock smoothly ticked through the final moments before liftoff without any major issues, and the Ariane 6 lit its hydrogen-fueled Vulcain 2.1 main engine, followed seven seconds later by ignition of two strap-on solid-fueled boosters to propel the 183-foot-tall (56-meter) launcher off the pad.

Then, Ariane 6 was off to the races, riding 1.9 million pounds (8,400 kilonewtons) of thrust through a late afternoon sky. The launcher rolled onto a course northeast from the tropical spaceport in South America, soaring over the Atlantic Ocean before shedding its two spent booster casings a little more than two minutes after liftoff. A minute later, the Swiss-made payload fairing jettisoned from the top of the rocket.