Ariane 6 Rocket's First Flight Success and Challenges
TapTechNews July 10th news, at 3:00 am today, the European Space Agency's (ESA) next-generation heavy-lift rocket Ariane 6 had its first flight mission at the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, ending Europe's one-year situation of being unable to independently enter space, but the rocket malfunctioned after entering orbit.
In simple terms, both the first stage and boosters of Ariane 6 worked normally, but the auxiliary power unit (APU) of the second stage only worked for a few seconds after the first separation from the satellite and then stalled prematurely, causing it to gradually deviate from the预定 orbital curve, and as a result, the two payloads failed to be successfully deployed.
However, as the satellite entered orbit, Ariane 6 has already proved that it has the ability to successfully launch payloads into space, so the ESA considers it a successful launch.
According to the ESA plan, the 9 CubeSats搭载 should have been deployed to a height of about 600 kilometers (about 373 miles) from the Earth about 65 minutes after liftoff, but the perigee of the rocket when it entered orbit was only about 350 kilometers (about 217 miles), and the second ignition of the second stage did not meet expectations, resulting in its actual operating height deviating from the expected, so it was unable to continue the third ignition, and the two reentry return experiment capsules also did not separate as planned and reentered the atmosphere near the Point Nemo.
The first flight mission, code-named VA262, is only regarded as a demonstration flight, aiming to showcase the ability and power of the Ariane 6 rocket to break away from the Earth's gravity and fly in space.
Ariane 6 is manufactured by the French Ariane Group and operated by its subsidiary Ariane Space on behalf of the ESA. The first stage consists of a Vulcain 2.1 engine (which is basically an improved version of the Ariane 5 Vulcain 2), and the upper stage is a brand new Vinci engine (TapTechNews note: The Ariane 5 upper stage is equipped with an Aestus or HM-7B).
In fact, Ariane 6 includes two models:
A62 type, equipped with two solid rocket boosters (SRB);
A64 type, equipped with four SRB.
According to the ESA official data, A62 and A64 can transport about 11.4 tons and 23.8 tons of payloads to the low Earth orbit (LEO) respectively, and the latter's launch capacity is comparable to that of the Ariane 5 rocket.
The head of ESA's space transportation, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, said, Because our launch demand is relatively low, from an economic point of view, reusable technology currently doesn't make sense for us. Therefore, we don't really need it at this stage.
He also added that Ariane 6 has received 30 launch orders, 18 of which will be used to build Amazon's new Kuiper satellite Internet constellation. He disclosed that this new rocket may carry out one more flight mission this year, and then increase to 6 times in 2025, 8 times in 2026, and 10 times in 2027.
