The launch of two giant rockets will take place over the next few days. February 28th will see Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch its massive Starship rocket on its eighth test flight from its South Texas launch site. Meanwhile, in French Guiana, Arianespace’s new Ariane 6 rocket is now scheduled to launch its first commercial flight […]

Arianespace has postponed the launch of its Ariane 6 rocket which was origially planned to fly on February 26th. Arianespace has not given a fresh date for the debut commercial mission which will eventually carry a French science craft (CSO-3) into a sun-synchronus orbit. “Due to further operations needed on a ground means, the launch […]

During last week’s 17th European Space Conference, launch company Arianespace announced it had won three new contracts. Arianespace was awarded contracts to launch PLATO, Sentinel-1D, and a pair of second-generation Galileo positioning satellites. The two Galileo craft will share a launcher. Arianespace now has a backlog of 30 Ariane 6 launches. Eighteen of them are […]

Arianespace will fly its next rocket mission (VA263) with Ariane 6 on February 26th. Its cargo will be a French military satellite (the CSO-3 high-res optical satellite). It is Ariane 6’s first commercial, fee-paying flight and follows on from the test debut flight on July 9th 2024. The current plan is for launch to take […]

The already much-delayed launch date for Europe’s giant heavy lift Ariane 6 rocket has again been delayed. Arianespace officials and the European Space Agency (ESA) said in the summer they were working towards a December 2024 launch. But on November 8th, Arianespace announced that the rocket would not launch until Q1 2025 and “from mid-February”. […]

At the end of June a European meterological service cancelled the order it had in place with Arianespace for the launch next year of its latest Eumetsat satellite (MTG-S1). Eumetsat will now be launched on a SpaceX rocket. The decision caused consternation and much criticicm from the European Space Agency as well as Arianespace. Indeed, […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) successfully launched its much-needed Ariane 6 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana on the evening of July 9th. While the launch completed many of the mission’s key tasks, it failed during the later stage of the flight. ESA was fulsome with praise following the first, second and […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed that its pre-launch Readiness Review of the Ariane 6 rocket had been wholly satisfactory, and that ESA had given the green light for a July 9th launch. Currently, and subject to the usual weather considerations, the launch window from Europe’s spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana is scheduled […]

July 9th is the scheduled launch date for the much-delayed test flight European Space Agency’s (ESA) Ariane 6 rocket. However, last week saw Europe’s important weather organisation cancel its launch contract on an Ariane 6 flight. Worse, perhaps, the cancellation was made in favour of Arianespace’s arch-rival SpaceX. Eumetsat, in a June 28th statement, said […]

The launch of the European Space Agency’s all-new Ariane 6 rocket gets ever-closer. Last week technicians at ESA’s Kourou, French Guiana spaceport completed a full ‘wet’ dress rehearsal of the rocket which was fully fuelled. The rocket took on about 180 metric tonnes of propellant and all was subsequently drained following the tests which included […]