The final flight of Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket, postponed to June 15 due to an anomaly, is scheduled for July 4 from Kourou in French Guiana, Arianespace announced on Friday.
This 117th and final flight of the European rocket, which is retiring after 27 years of service, will launch a French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and an experimental German satellite. The rotating window is scheduled between 21:30 and 23:05 GMT.
The technicians replaced the three pyrotechnic lines at the origin of the last report and checked all these lines, Arianespace explained.
The pyrotechnic lines in question are involved in the separation of the boosters from the rocket. Boosters are solid propellants that help get the rocket off the ground and then jettisoned in flight.
This last flight is taking place at a low point for Europe in space, since until the delivery of Ariane 6 it will have almost no independent access to space, while competition is raging in the launcher market, dominated by the American SpaceX.
In question: the brutal end of the use of Russian Soyuz missiles after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which brought the activity of the Kourou base to a standstill.
A situation exacerbated by the failure of the first commercial launch of the Italian Vega C light launch vehicle in December 2022 and the cumulative delays of Ariane 6, whose maiden flight will take place at best in late 2023.
After the last flight of Ariane 5, only a launch of Vega in September and a probable resumption of flight operations of Vega-C at the end of the year are on the agenda in Europe.