Ariane 6

Michele Franci, former CTO of Inmarsat, characterized the development of Ariane 6 as part of a conscious effort in Europe to design for cost and efficiency rather than as a final, unchangeable product.

Latitude is one of several European startups developing small launch vehicles with the support of national and European government agencies concerned about a launcher crisis in Europe caused by the loss of existing vehicles and delays and problems with new vehicles such as Ariane 6 and Vega C.

The Ariane 64 is the most powerful configuration of Europe’s new heavy-lift launcher family Ariane 6.

Arianespace’s first Ariane 6 mission will use the 62 version of the rocket with two side boosters.

The European Commission is the first government customer expected to procure an Ariane 6 launch to place Galileo satellites into orbit.

ArianeGroup and Avio are using booster commonality of the P120C between Ariane 6 and Vega C to increase production scale and lower costs for both rockets.

ESA expects the Ariane 6 to offer launch services for satellites at roughly half the cost of the Ariane 5.

The Ariane 6 maiden flight will use the Ariane 62 configuration with two strap-on solid-rocket boosters and will carry 30 satellites for OneWeb.

At least half of ArianeGroup’s transition batch of 14 Ariane 6 rockets are dedicated to European government customers, including six for the European Commission’s Galileo satellites and one for the French military’s Composante Spatiale Optique-3 imaging satellite.

MT Aerospace in Germany built the Ariane 6 launch table structure and shipped it to Kourou for integration on the launch pad.

ArianeGroup is the lead contractor for Europe’s Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 launcher families and is equally owned by Airbus and Safran.

A separate Ariane 6 upper stage Hot Firing Model (HFM) will be hot-fire tested at the DLR site in Lampoldshausen, Germany.

On 2022-07-12, the European Space Agency transferred the Ariane 6 central core, comprising its core stage and upper stage, to a launchpad in Kourou for combined tests ahead of a maiden launch next year.

TTTech Aerospace developed, manufactured, and qualified a radiation-hardened TTEthernet® ASIC in both HiRel and space quality with Ariane 6 as one of its first users.

ArianeGroup signed exploitation contracts with Sabca, Europropulsion, Avio, and MTAerospace for elements of the Ariane 6 program.

Airbus’ new state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 facility includes a dedicated manufacturing and assembly line for Ariane 6 launcher structures.

The Ariane 6 launcher structures delivered by Airbus include the Interface Structure, the Launch Vehicle Adapter for the upper stage, and the Equipped Solid Rocket upper part of each rocket booster.

Ariane 6’s incremental development program is intended to regularly improve the performance of the launch solutions offered by Arianespace to institutional and commercial customers.

Airbus’ new state-of-the-art Industry 4.0 facility in Getafe includes a dedicated manufacturing and assembly line for Ariane 6 launcher structures.

MT Aerospace is a subsidiary of OHB that produces tanks and structures for the Ariane 6 rocket.