The last flight of Ariane 5, scheduled to take off this Friday night from Kourou in French Guiana, has been postponed for at least two weeks due to an anomaly, Arianespace announced Thursday.
“In accordance with security requirements, Arianespace has decided to postpone the deployment of the launcher,” the company responsible for operating the European launchers said in a tweet. The launcher’s move to its launch pad in Kourou, prior to launch, has been cancelled.
This decision “is not abnormal” and “is part of our reliability approach that made the success of Ariane 5 possible,” according to Arianespace.
last flight
This 117th and last flight of the European rocket, which says goodbye after 27 years of service, will put into orbit a French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and a German experimental satellite.
“The launcher and the Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit and Syracuse 4B satellites are in the final assembly building in a stabilized configuration and in all the required safety conditions,” says Arianespace.
Takeoff was scheduled for this Friday between 11:26 p.m. and 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Paris time, from the Guiana Space Center (CSG). This final flight comes in a low period for the European space, almost deprived of independent access to space pending the takeover of Ariane 6, while competition continues in the launcher market dominated by the American SpaceX.
In question: the brutal end of the exploitation of Russian Soyuz rockets, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which sank the activity of the Kourou base.
A situation aggravated by the failure of the first commercial launch of the Italian Vega C light launcher, in December 2022, and the accumulated delays of the Ariane 6, whose maiden flight will take place at best at the end of 2023. After the last flight 5 from Ariane, there will only be a Vega release left in September, and a probable return to Vega-C flight later in the year.
Source: BFM TV
