Conquest of space –
The second Ariane 6 mission planned for mid-February
The next flight of Ariane 6 will be the first “operational” launch with the French military observation satellite CSO-3.
Published today at 9:45 p.m.
The inaugural flight took place on July 9 and was a success.
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The second Ariane 6 mission, with a military observation satellite, initially planned for the end of 2024, will take place from mid-February, ArianeGroup and Arianespace announced on Friday in a press release.
After the success of the inaugural flight on July 9, the teams from ArianeGroup and its partners “recovered and analyzed millions of data,” according to the press release. “These careful analyzes allowed us to make some adaptations to prepare for future Ariane 6 missions,” said Martin Sion, executive president of ArianeGroup, quoted in the press release.
“These different parameters lead us to consider the date of the next Ariane 6 flight in the first quarter of 2025, from mid-February”, and “Arianespace is preparing with its customers the following launches in 2025, including the planned dates are unchanged,” according to the press release.
Ariane 6 is a program managed and financed by the European Space Agency (ESA). It declared in September that the anomaly at the end of the inaugural flight had been identified and was being treated, adding that “nothing stood in the way of the second mission”.
First “operational” launch
The next flight of Ariane 6 will be the first “operational” launch with the French military observation satellite CSO-3.
“We are impatiently awaiting the firing of Ariane 6 with CSO-3,” declared Thursday the Chief of Staff of the Air and Space Force, General Jérôme Bellanger.
Ariane 6 must then ramp up with six flights planned in 2025 and eight the following year. The European launcher currently has 29 flights in its order book.
During the inaugural flight on July 9, Ariane 6 did not carry expensive commercial satellites. It had put into orbit around ten university micro-satellites.
This flight marked the return of autonomous access to space for Europeans, one year after the last Ariane 5 flight.
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