Ariane 6 launch returns in-house space access to Europe’s armed forces

PARIS — Europe restored sovereign access to space with the first launch of the Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket on Tuesday, after years of delays and retirement of the previous launcher had left the continent without guaranteed access to orbit , and kept a French spy satellite grounded.

The all-new Ariane 6 blasted off from French Guiana for a validation flight loaded with scientific experiments and testing equipment. The next flight planned for December will carry CSO-3, a French military-surveillance satellite that had originally been scheduled for launch in 2021.

“This first successful launch of Ariane 6 finally gives Europe back its capacity to access space,” Philippe Baptiste, the head of French space agency CNES, said in a statement.

The first launch of Ariane 6, originally planned for 2020, had been pushed back by technical issues as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. Russia broke off space cooperation in 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine, meaning Europe could no longer use the Soyuz launchers as a stop-gap measure, and leaving the continent reliant on commercial providers including SpaceX for heavy space lift.

The most urgent upcoming military missions for Ariane 6 are observation satellites including CSO-3, according to Paul Wohrer , a research fellow specialized in space issues at the French Institute of International Relations, or IFRI. France also still has to launch the Yoda agile satellite demonstrator, after the small patroller satellite was held up by a lack of launch slots.

The lack of autonomous access to space was “becoming dangerous,” leaving Europe unable to launch satellites that are “extremely sensitive and extremely useful for our armed forces,” according to Wohrer, and pushing back future programs such as the French IRIS military-observation satellites.

European armies “need this type of space capability, particularly at a time when war is on Europe’s doorstep,” Wohrer said. “The war in Ukraine clearly demonstrated the importance of space. We seem to be entering a period in which the ability to access space will become increasingly strategic.”

While military satellites made up a limited share of Ariane 5 launches, the retired rocket’s final mission in July 2023 lifted the French Syracuse 4B military communications satellite into orbit, as well as Germany’s Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit with a dual civilian-military communications payload.

Over a 27-year career, Ariane 5 placed the military communications systems for the major western European states in orbit: Skynet 5 for the U.K., Syracuse 3 and 4 for France, Sicral-2 for Italy, Secomsat and SpainSat for Spain and Satcom BW for Germany’s Bundeswehr.

The new rocket has an order book for 30 launches, Caroline Arnoux, head of the Ariane 6 program at Arianespace, said in a press briefing on June 25. After two launches planned for this year, the pace will increase to six in 2025, eight the following year and ten in 2027. About a third of the missions are for government customers, including the military.

The primary goal of Ariane 6 is to serve European institutional missions and ensure they can reach space, which is the core reason for public funding of the launcher, according to Lucia Linares, head of space transportation strategy and institutional launches at the European Space Agency. The new rocket will the “Europe’s workhorse for guaranteed access to space,” Linares said at the June 25 briefing.

An Ariane 6 launch may initially be in the order of tens of millions of dollars more expensive than a launch by SpaceX of the reusable Falcon 9, according to Wohrer. That probably won’t hold back European armed forces from favoring the domestically-produced rocket, he said.

“It’s unlikely that the difference in costs will be enough for the military not to buy European launchers,” Wohrer said. “At what point does it become an unbearable factor? It’s a bit like the cost of security, the cost of ensuring strategic autonomy in terms of access to space.”

ESA is working on a reusable rocket engine called Prometheus, with ArianeGroup the lead contractor, with the goal of making a “very low-cost” engine that can be built at one-tenth of the cost of the Vulcain 2 that powered the Ariane 5.

Launching military or dual-use satellites on a foreign rocket risks revealing secrets, and it puts Europe at the mercy of foreign competitors’ prices, as was the case with the EU paying SpaceX a premium for security measures around the launch of Galileo navigation satellites, according to Wohrer. The lack of autonomous launch capacity “is something quite dangerous, quite risky,” he said.

European countries will have to think about bolstering their capabilities to gather intelligence from space if they want to be less reliant on the United States, according to Wohrer. The European parliament has raised concerns about depending on the U.S. in terms of space security, saying this could contradict the EU’s desire to achieve strategic autonomy.

“If this is the kind of development we’re heading for, access to space will be absolutely essential,” Wohrer said. “I don’t think you can be a major military power today without access to space. Frankly, space has become extremely useful for waging war and conducting operations.”

Rudy Ruitenberg is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. He started his career at Bloomberg News and has experience reporting on technology, commodity markets and politics.

巴黎——周二，随着阿里安6号重型运载火箭的首次发射，欧洲恢复了对太空的主权控制权。此前，由于多年的延误和上一代运载火箭的退役，欧洲大陆一直无法获得进入轨道的保障，也导致一颗法国间谍卫星无法发射。

全新的阿里安6号火箭从法属圭亚那发射升空，执行验证飞行任务，火箭上装载着科学实验设备和测试器材。下一次飞行计划于12月进行，将搭载CSO-3卫星，这是一颗法国军用监视卫星，原计划于2021年发射。

“阿里安6号的首次成功发射，终于让欧洲重新获得了进入太空的能力，”法国国家空间研究中心（CNES）主任菲利普·巴蒂斯特在一份声明中表示。

原计划于2020年进行的阿里安6号火箭首次发射，因技术问题和新冠疫情而被推迟。俄罗斯在2022年入侵乌克兰后中断了太空合作，这意味着欧洲无法再使用联盟号运载火箭作为临时措施，欧洲大陆不得不依赖包括SpaceX在内的商业航天公司进行重型航天发射。

据法国国际关系研究所（IFRI）专门研究太空问题的研究员保罗·沃勒（Paul Wohrer）称，阿丽亚娜6号火箭即将执行的最紧迫的军事任务是发射包括CSO-3在内的观测卫星。此外，由于缺乏发射时段，小型巡逻卫星“尤达”（Yoda）的发射计划被推迟，法国仍需发射其敏捷卫星演示样机。

沃勒表示，缺乏自主进入太空的能力“正变得危险”，导致欧洲无法发射“对我们的武装部队极其敏感且极其有用”的卫星，并推迟了法国 IRIS 军事观测卫星等未来计划。

沃勒尔表示，欧洲军队“需要这种太空能力，尤其是在战争逼近欧洲之际”。“乌克兰战争清楚地表明了太空的重要性。我们似乎正在进入一个太空能力日益具有战略意义的时期。”

虽然军用卫星在阿里安 5 号火箭的发射中所占比例有限，但该火箭在 2023 年 7 月的最后一次发射任务中，将法国的 Syracuse 4B 军用通信卫星送入轨道，并将德国的 Heinrich-Hertz 卫星（搭载军民两用通信有效载荷）送入轨道。

在长达 27 年的服役生涯中，阿丽亚娜 5 号将西欧主要国家的军事通信系统送入轨道：英国的 Skynet 5、法国的 Syracuse 3 和 4、意大利的 Sicral-2、西班牙的 Secomsat 和 SpainSat 以及德国联邦国防军的 Satcom BW。

阿丽亚娜航天公司阿丽亚娜6号项目负责人卡罗琳·阿诺克斯在6月25日的新闻发布会上表示，新型火箭目前已接到30次发射订单。今年计划进行两次发射，之后发射频率将增加，2025年增至6次，2026年增至8次，2027年增至10次。其中约三分之一的任务来自政府客户，包括军方。

据欧洲航天局航天运输战略和机构发射负责人露西亚·利纳雷斯 (Lucia Linares) 称，阿里安6号的主要目标是服务于欧洲机构的太空任务，确保它们能够进入太空，这也是该运载火箭获得公共资金支持的核心原因。利纳雷斯在6月25日的新闻发布会上表示，这枚新型火箭将成为“欧洲确保进入太空的主力军”。

沃勒表示，阿里安6号火箭的发射成本最初可能比SpaceX公司可重复使用的猎鹰9号火箭高出数千万美元。但他同时指出，这可能不会阻止欧洲各国军队倾向于选择国产火箭。

沃勒尔表示：“成本差异不太可能足以让军方放弃购买欧洲的运载火箭。但成本差异究竟要到什么程度才会成为无法承受的因素呢？这有点像安全成本，就像确保太空战略自主的成本一样。”

欧洲航天局正在研发一种名为“普罗米修斯”的可重复使用火箭发动机，由阿里安集团担任主要承包商，目标是制造一种“成本非常低”的发动机，其制造成本仅为阿里安5号火箭所使用的“火神2”发动机的十分之一。

沃勒尔指出，使用外国火箭发射军用或军民两用卫星存在泄露机密的风险，而且会使欧洲受制于外国竞争对手的价格，就像欧盟为伽利略导航卫星发射的安全措施向SpaceX支付高额费用一样。他表示，缺乏自主发射能力“相当危险，风险很大”。

沃勒尔认为，如果欧洲国家想要减少对美国的依赖，就必须考虑加强自身从太空获取情报的能力。欧洲议会曾对在太空安全方面依赖美国表示担忧，称这可能与欧盟实现战略自主的愿望相悖。

沃勒尔说：“如果这就是我们未来的发展方向，那么太空获取权将至关重要。我认为，如今没有太空获取权，就无法成为军事强国。坦白说，太空对于发动战争和开展军事行动已经变得极其有用。”

鲁迪·鲁伊滕贝格是《防务新闻》的欧洲记者。他的职业生涯始于彭博新闻社，拥有报道科技、大宗商品市场和政治方面的经验。