Early today Arianespace successfully launched three French military reconnaissance satellites using its mostly Italian-made Vega rocket.
This was the third successful Vega launch since a 2020 launch failure.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
41 China
25 SpaceX
18 Russia
5 Europe (Arianespace)
China remains ahead of the U.S. 41 to 38 in the national rankings.
Two launches occurred this weekend.
First Arianespace used its Ariane 5 rocket to place two communications satellites in orbit, one for the French military and the second for the commercial company SES. The total payload weight set a record for the rocket.
With this success the path is now clear for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on the next Ariane 5 launch in December.
Next the Chinese used its Long March 3B rocket to launch a technology test satellite aimed at testing “space debris mitigation technologies.” No other information was released.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
37 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Arianespace (Europe)
China now leads the U.S. 37 to 36 in the national rankings.
Arianespace today announced that it has postponed its next Ariane 5 launch of two communications satellites, scheduled for October 22nd, because of issues with ground equipment.
Though there appear to be no issues with the rocket, this delay could effect the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December on another Ariane 5 rocket. Arianespace has said that it wants to complete this launch first, to make sure the fixes it completed on the rocket’s fairing are truly working.
It was those problems that shut down all Ariane 5 launches for almost a full year.
No new launch date has been set. Normally, ground equipment issues cause short delays, so we should be hopeful all will be fixed quickly and this launch will be quickly rescheduled and take off without problems.
After almost twenty years of construction (a decade behind schedule) and a cost of $10 billion, ($9.5 billion over budget), the James Webb Space Telescope today arrived at the processing facility at Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, where it will be prepared for a December 18, 2021 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.
Once launched the telescope, which is not a replacement for Hubble because it observes in the infrared (not optical) and is optimized for deep space cosmology, will take two weeks to reach its orbital position about a million miles from Earth, as shown in the graphic.
Let us all cross our fingers and toes that it all works as designed, for if it doesn’t this will be the biggest failure ever in the history of NASA.
Capitalism in space: Because of the two recent launch failures of Arianespace’s Vega rocket (built mostly in Italy), the Italian space agency (ASI) has decided to take the launch of an Earth observation satellite from Arianespace and award the launch contract instead to SpaceX.
The article at the link describes in detail the history and politics that make this decision significant. Essentially, because Arianespace in the past decade has failed to meet the challenge of SpaceX, so that its launches continue to be more expensive, this government-subsidized business has tried to force nations in the European Space Agency (ESA) to use Arianespace rockets via political agreements.
With this decision Italy is defying that pressure, which in turn is going to increase the pressure on Arianespace to finally step up its game, or die from lack of business. For example, when the ESA agreed to have Arianespace build its next generation rocket, the Ariane 6, it failed to require it to be reuseable. The Ariane 6 rocket was therefore designed as an expendable rocket, which meant that right from the start it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It has therefore failed to win launch contracts.
Expect the Ariane 6 to continue to fade as the years pass, simply because the bureaucrats in ESA and Arianespace refused to take their competition seriously.
Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket today successfully launched five satellites into orbit, completing the company’s third launch in 2021 and the second Vega launch this year.
With only three launches so far in 2021, Arianespace does not make the leader board, which is presently as follows:
26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains 31 to 26.
Arianespace today successfully completed its first Ariane 5 launch since August 2020, placing in orbit two commercial communications satellites.
The long gap in launches occurred because of a vibration issue discovered during that August 2020 launch durng the release of the rocket’s two fairing halves.
Engineers introduced modifications to the Ariane 5’s payload fairing, or nose cone, to reduce vibrations imparted on the satellites during separation of the shroud, which protects payloads during the first few minutes of flight through the atmosphere. Ground teams will analyze data from the rocket to make sure the changes reduced the vibrations.
Another launch is scheduled for September, followed next by the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in either November or December. The results from today’s launch as well as the one in September will determine if the Webb launch will go forward on time.
These issues with Ariane 5, delays imposed by the company in fear of the Wuhan flu, and other launch problems with Arianespace’s Vega rocket, has meant that this is only its second launch in 2021, a pace that is below its pace for most of the last decade. Whether the company can recover and pick up the pace before the end of the year will depend on what they learn during today’s launch.
With only two launches total, Europe’s Arianespace remains off the leader board in the 2021 launch race:
24 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab
The U.S. lead over China in the national rankings remains 30 to 24.
It appears that officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) have begun preparing the public for a further delay in the first launch of its new Ariane 6 rocket, from the second quarter of 2022, as announced in October 2020, to the third quarter of 2022, at the earliest.
Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, at the Paris Air Forum [described the creation of] “a small group” … to make an independent assessment of the schedule for the final development phase of the Ariane 6 rocket. The goal of this task force will be to ensure that Europe does everything it needs to do launch on time.
…In referring to an “on time” launch, Aschbacher said he meant next year, before the European Space Agency’s Ministerial Council meeting that is typically held in October or November. This is a high-level meeting where representatives from each member nation of the space agency gather to set policy. The European Space Agency’s budget is provided, in varying amounts, by member nations. “This is a must,” Aschbacher said of launching before the 2022 meeting, “because we need good news, and good success, for our politicians to see that Europe performs, that Europe delivers, and therefore it is worth investing in space in the ministerial conference.”
It appears from these statements that the development of Ariane 6 is now faced with delays that might make a launch by the third quarter in ’22 difficult, and this new independent committee is being put together to try to forestall that possibility. What makes this even more significant for Ariane 6 is that it continues to have trouble winning contracts from the nations within ESA, as it remains far more expensive that SpaceX’s Falcon 9. If that first launch is delayed past that important fall ’22 high-level meeting, those politicians at that meeting might decide to consider serious new alternatives to it, or even more drastically decide to replace it entirely.
As first revealed in mid-May, Arianespace has been forced to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by at least one month because of a problem with the fairing on its Ariane 5 rocket, found during an August 2020 launch.
There have been no Ariane 5 launches since. According to yesterday’s press briefing, however:
“The origin of the problem has been found. Corrective actions have been taken,” Daniel de Chambure, acting head of Ariane 5 adaptations and future missions at ESA, said. “The qualification review has started, so we should be able to confirm all that within a few days or weeks.” He did not elaborate on the problem or those corrective actions, beyond stating that the problem took place during separation of the payload fairing. Industry sources said in May that, on the two launches, the separation system imparted vibrations on the payload above acceptable limits, but did not damage the payloads.
It appears this new delay to Webb’s launch is because two commercial payloads must lift off first before Webb, with the first now scheduled for July. According to Arianespace, it will take two months prep for the next commercial launch, followed by two months prep for the Webb launch. That puts the launch of Webb in November.
Overall this particular delay is slight, only a few weeks, and pales in comparison to the ten years of delays experienced by NASA during development and construction of Webb. It also will add very little to the telescope’s overall budget, which has grown from an original price of $500 million to now about $10 billion.
An issue with the fairing release on the last two Ariane 5 launches has not only paused use of that rocket since August 2020, it might cause another delay in the planned October 31, 2021 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.
In a statement to SpaceNews, Arianespace acknowledged that “post-flight analyses conducted on two recent Ariane 5 launches have indicated the occurrence of a less than fully nominal separation of the fairing, however with no adverse impact on the Ariane 5 flights in question.”
The company did not elaborate on the problem, but industry sources familiar with the issue said that, on both the August 2020 launch and the previous Ariane launch in February 2020, the separation of the faring induced vibrations into the payload stack well above acceptable limits. Neither incident damaged any of the payloads, but raised concerns about the effect on future missions, including JWST.
Moreover, Arianespace has two Ariane 5 launches on its schedule that are supposed to launch before Webb. If those are delayed it puts a further squeeze on the Webb launch date.
Meanwhile, the final checkouts of the Webb telescope have been proceeding, including a successful test of the unfolding of the telescope’s segmented mirror.
After a more than decade of delays and budget overruns — raising this telescope’s budget from 1/2 billion to $10 billion — it appears that Webb’s final schedule delay might occur not because of the telescope but because of the rocket.
In addition, the issue at Arianespace appears to be seriously impacting that company’s ’21 launch schedule, having failed to launch any Ariane 5 rockets so far this year.
Arianespace yesterday successfully completed its first Vega rocket lift-off since a launch failure last year, placing six satellites in orbit.
This was Arianespace’s first launch in 2021. Though the year is still early, the timing of this launch, late April, puts them well behind the pace they have set for most of the 21st century.
The leader board for the 2021 launch race remains unchanged:
12 SpaceX
10 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. still leads China 17 to 10 in the national rankings.
Arianespace today successfully launched a French military reconnaissance satellite from French Guiana using a Russian Soyuz rocket.
This is the last launch for Europe in 2020, their sixth total. It is also the last publicly scheduled launch for the year. My annual worldwide launch report will follow in a day or so.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
35 China
25 SpaceX
15 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab
6 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains 40 to 35.
