By Alain Charmeau, full member of the AAE and former Chief Executive Officer of ArianeGroup.
[*] Article published in ASAF’s Spring 2022 issue of “Engagement”.
Designed in the 1990s, the Ariane 5 launcher aimed to provide European states with autonomous access to space and to develop new technologies in the 12 countries participating in the programme. The Ariane 5 launcher was then a commercial success because it perfectly met the need for access to geostationary orbit at a time when there was a shortage of high-capacity launchers.
New competition developed with the Russian Proton launcher marketed by the American company ILS, then with the announced arrival of new American (Falcon), Japanese and Indian launchers in the mid-2010s, while Proton suffered a series of failures.
At the same time, satellite technology has rapidly evolved, allowing much smaller satellites to carry out some of the missions offered by large geostationary satellites from low Earth orbit. Other, smaller launchers: Russian (Soyuz), Indian, Japanese, Korean have come to complete the global supply, this supply becoming greater than the demand for launches, thus creating new competitive pressure.
Decided in 2014, Ariane 6 had to…