ESA Launches Ariane 6 Rocket To Orbit; 2nd-stage Anomaly Complicates Debut Mission
ESA Launches Ariane 6 Rocket To Orbit; 2nd-stage Anomaly Complicates Debut Mission
Keneci Network @kenecifeed
Embedded Files
SPACECRAFT
Ariane 6 lifted off for the first time at 1901 UTC, July 9, from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The European Space Agency's new spacecraft, a successor to its workhorse Ariane 5, is a two-stage rocket built by the French company ArianeGroup and operated by its subsidiary Arianespace on behalf of ESA. It was carrying 9 cubesats in Tuesday's debut flight.
"Ariane 6 will power Europe into space. Ariane 6 will make history," Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general said via X today in the leadup to launch.
A snag during launch: around 2 hours and 50 minutes into the flight, before the Ariane 6 upper rocket booster dove back toward Earth, intentionally plunging out of orbit, officials announced that an “anomaly” occurred. The root cause of the issue was not immediately clear. An engine’s reignition stopped prematurely, preventing the rocket from properly deploying all its payload as expected, according to ESA.
The rocket's first stage is powered by a single Vulcain 2.1 engine -- an evolved variant of the Ariane 5's Vulcain 2 -- and its upper stage features one Vinci engine, which is new technology. (The Ariane 5's upper stage sported one Aestus engine, or one HM-7B.).
Ariane 6 upper stage's Vinci engine
The Ariane 6 comes in two variants: the A62, which has two strap-on solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the A64, which has four SRBs. The A62 and A64 can deliver about 11.4 tons (10.3 metric tons) and 23.8 tons (21.6 metric tons) to low Earth orbit (LEO), respectively.
At first during Tuesday's debut flight, every milestone was met as the rocket’s two side boosters detached, the first and second stages separated, the second stage Vinci engine fired, shut down, and fired again.
Ariane 6 first stage sseparation
The Vinci engine uses an Auxiliary Propulsion Unit(APU), a device that pressurizes upper-stage fuel tanks during flight and provides additional thrust as needed, allowing the engine to fire as many as three times. Although it did relight a second time, it quickly shut down due to a yet-to-be-determined problem.
The engine was supposed to reignite a third time to deorbit the second stage into the Pacific Ocean to avoid cluttering Earth orbit. Two small capsules were to be released to test reentry technologies.
A graphic from ESA’s live broadcast shows the path the second stage was supposed to follow in green, with it falling back to Earth, and its actual path in yellow. Without the APU, ESA’s on-air commentators said further re-ignitions are not possible. The second stage remains in a stable orbit with the two capsules.
"Europe is back in space!" ESA wrote on X during live launch webcast Tuesday. "#Ariane6 demonstrated a successful liftoff, launch to orbit and deployment of satellites powering Europe into space. The tech-demo phase of Ariane 6 is still in progress but has shown an unexpected result which will only affect the end of the mission."
Among the scientific gear on today's flight, are several experiments that stayed attached to the Ariane 6's upper stage. The rocket was also supposed to deploy two experimental reentry capsules about two hours and 40 minutes into the flight. These two spacecraft aimed to show that they can survive the fiery trip home through Earth's atmosphere.
That didn't happen, however. Due to the APU failure, the Ariane 6's upper stage did not complete a burn designed to set up that final deployment.
"At one point of time, we reignited the APU. It did reignite, and then it stopped," ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion said in a postlaunch press conference today. "We don't know why it stopped. This is something that we will have to understand when we've got all the data."
This anomaly, which occurred during the mission's "tech demo" phase, he said, shouldn't overshadow the overall success of the flight. "We are perfectly on track now to make a second launch this year, in 2024, for the French MoD, and to make the next missions," Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël said during the press conference. "So, it has no consequence on the next launches."
Two of Ariane 6's payloads make up NASA's Cubesat Radio Interferometry Experiment(CURIE), which will attempt to determine the source of mysterious solar radio waves.
"This is a very ambitious and very exciting mission," CURIE principal investigator David Sundkvist, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a NASA statement. "This is the first time that someone is ever flying a radio interferometer in space in a controlled way, and so it's a pathfinder for radio astronomy in general."
The other cubesats on Ariane 6 flight will do a variety of work, from studying Earth's climate and weather to measuring highly energetic gamma rays.
Today's launch comes after long delays during Ariane 6 development which began in late 2014. It was originally envisioned to debut in 2020. But the timeline slipped due to technical issues and outside problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
The delays meant that Ariane 6 did not overlap with the Ariane 5, which flew 117 orbital missions from 1996 to 2023. The Ariane 5's retirement left Vega, a small-satellite launcher, as the only operational orbital rocket in Europe's stable.
European space officials don't want to be dependent on Elon Musk's SpaceX -- and its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket which unlike Ariane 6, is reusable.
The Ariane 6 "will ensure our guaranteed, autonomous access to space -- and all of the science, Earth observation, technology development and commercial possibilities that it entails," ESA officials wrote in a preview of today's launch.
Ariane 6, like Ariane 5 before it, is expendable, a design decision, ESA officials claim, makes sense, given that the new rocket will likely fly a maximum of 10 times or so per year for the foreseeable future.
The new rocket will likely fly one more mission this year, then ramp up to six flights in 2025, eight in 2026 and 10 in 2027, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA's director of space transportation, reportedly said recently.
The Ariane 6 team includes ESA, the French space agency CNES, and ArianeGroup and its subsidiary Arianespace. ESA funds development and owns the launch infrastructure at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. CNES operates the Centre. ArianeGroup, a joint venture of Airbus and Safran, is Ariane’s prime contractor and Arianespace markets and operates Ariane.
ESA’s Aschbacher, CNES president Philippe Baptiste, ArianeGroup CEO Martin Sion, and Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël could hardly contain their joy Tuesday, as they shared their reaction for the cameras after the cubesats were deployed, about two-thirds of the way through the mission.
WATCH Ariane 6 rocket debut launch.
Google Sites
Report abuse