ESA cancels planned upper stage upgrade for Ariane-6
The first Ariane-6 rocket launch in 2024
It appears that back in 2025 but only revealed recently the European Space Agency (ESA) canceled the planned upper stage upgrade for Ariane-6, dubbed Icarus, that the rocket’s builder ArianeGroup had been developing.
This decision has now been confirmed by ESA.
The decision appears to have been partly because of a desire to increase the launch cadence of Ariane-6 in order to meet the demands of its top customer, Amazon, to launch more Leo satellites more frequently. The decision however has impacted a planned ESA mission to the Saturn moon Enceladus, which had relied on the upgrade and Icarus for its mission. Mission planners have now been scrambling to rethink their plans, as the present Ariane-6 is not powerful enough to achieve the intended mission.
According to comments by ESA officials at the second link, the agency is still considering a variety of upgrades to Ariane-6, but those upgrades remain vague, and it appears ESA is not funding them sufficiently anyway.
This whole story hinges on the decision by ESA and Arianespace in 2015 to make Ariane-6 an expendable rocket. It is simply too expensive to compete in the present market of reusable rockets, and thus European satellite customers have been increasingly going elsewhere. If it wasn’t for Amazon’s contract the rocket would have few launch customers, except for ESA’s government launches. For this reason, it appears ESA’s member states don’t want to spend money upgrading it. They’d rather use that cash to help the new rocket startups that will eventually replace Ariane-6 with better and cheaper rockets.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Ariane-6 an “expandable”…
Typo fixed. Thanks.
With respect to space, Europe always seems like a sleeper too cheap buy a full-size blanket – so either his shoulders or his feet are always getting cold. It’d be a fine jest if the Enceladus probe winds up flying on Falcon Heavy or New Glenn.