Space, because Europe still needs SpaceX
On 5 July Ariane 5 took off successfully, the last historic mission of the European heavy launcher. While awaiting the maiden flight of the successor Ariane 6, Europe relies on the American SpaceX to access space
Europe still needs the American SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace company, to access space.
On 5 July at 19:00 local time the Ariane 5 launcher successfully took off from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit for the German Government and Syracuse 4B for the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. It was the last historic mission for the European heavy launcher developed by ArianeGroup.
“The successful final launch of Ariane 5 on July 5 means that Europe temporarily lacks the ability to launch payloads into orbit,” observes SpaceNews .
After the delays accumulated over the past three years, the maiden launch of Ariane 6 is still expected later this year.
Meanwhile, Europe cannot count on the Russian Soyuz rocket either. In February 2022 , European space cooperation with Moscow was interrupted in response to European sanctions for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Without forgetting that the other European light launcher, Vega C, is also stuck on the ground after the launch failure of December 2022. A new anomaly found in the test of the Zefiro 40 engine necessary for the return to flight of the Vega C launcher last 28 June forces the manufacturer Avio to start a new investigation and new analyses.
This situation led the European Space Agency (ESA) to announce in October 2022 that it was moving two science missions to SpaceX's Falcon 9.
One has already left. On July 1 , Euclid, the ESA cosmological mission conceived with the aim of exploring the evolution of the dark universe, took off successfully. The launch took place from Cape Canaveral in Florida (USA) aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Aschbacher praised SpaceX for its role in launching Euclid. “SpaceX has been very proactive, very fast, very professional in providing this launch service. And I'm very happy now that this has been successfully conducted."
And now the Hera probe's next mission will be launched on a Falcon 9 in October 2024 (originally planned with Ariane 6).
All the details.
THE LAST FLIGHT OF ARIANE 5 WAITING FOR ARIANE 6
July 5 marked the 117th and final launch of Ariane 5 which will be replaced by the new European heavy launch Ariane 6. “Ahead of its maiden flight, Ariane 6 is currently passing a number of key milestones in Europe as well as French Guiana ” reports a note from Arianespace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup, which deals with the marketing of the launches.
At the moment the maiden flight is still expected by the end of the year. However, for the American newspaper "it seems increasingly unlikely that it will be ready for its inaugural launch before 2024".
So other European missions are likely to fly SpaceX's Falcon 9.
ESA WILL RELY ON SPACEX'S FALCON 9 AGAIN
In a June 29 briefing following an ESA Council meeting, the agency announced that the Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer, or EarthCARE mission, already moved from Soyuz to Vega C last October, would likely fly to the Falcon instead. 9 in the second quarter of 2024.
As SpaceNews reports, in the same briefing, ESA officials said they were in talks with SpaceX to launch up to four Galileo satellites on Falcon 9 vehicles.
"We are moving forward with negotiations which will hopefully be concluded soon with SpaceX," said Javier Benedicto, ESA's director of navigation. In a July 1 interview following Euclid's launch, Aschbacher said it will be up to the European Commission to decide when and how to launch those Galileo satellites. "We have provided all the technical information relating to the compatibility of the launcher, which the Commission has", underlined the dg ESA. "Now it's their turn to make a decision."
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE VEGA C
This announcement coincided with another piece of news communicated by Avio, the Colleferro-based company that builds the Vega space carrier.
On 29 June, the group led by Giulio Ranzo announced in a note that the day before, a static ignition test of the Zefiro 40 engine (second stage of the Vega C launcher) had been carried out in compliance with the scheduled times. the return to flight of Vega C after the flight anomaly suffered during the last VV22 launch in December.
Therefore, planning for Vega C's return to flight is currently under evaluation, pending further analysis and investigation.
At the same time, the company stressed that the original version of Vega, which does not use the Zefiro 40, is expected to resume launches in September.
Although the ESA conference coincided with the news of the Zefiro 40 test anomaly, director Aschbacher specified that the change for the EarthCare mission was not directly related to that, but rather to the failed launch last December of Vega C. as well as changes in EarthCARE's dimensions that would have required modifications to Vega C's payload fairing to accommodate it.
“With these two elements, I have asked my inspector general to reassess the situation,” Aschbacher explained at the briefing, SpaceNews reports again. “The conclusion of this assessment by the Inspector General recommended that I not fly the Vega C”.
THE WORDS OF ASCHBACHER
In light of this, the ESA number one reiterated past comments according to which the problems with Ariane 6 and Vega C and the loss of Soyuz had created a "launcher crisis" in Europe.
“We are in a crisis and we should use the opportunity to convert this crisis into actions and changes that need to be taken to develop a robust launch system for Europe in the future,” said Aschbacher, looking beyond Ariane 6 and Vega C. ESA's director general also outlined a long-term vision, predicting that this temporary gap in European launch capabilities will be forgotten in the long term, once Ariane 6 and Vega C are fully operational.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/spazio-perche-leuropa-ha-ancora-bisogno-di-spacex/ on Fri, 07 Jul 2023 12:25:19 +0000.