Ariane 6: a strategic success for Europe, but challenges to come

The delays accu­mu­lat­ed by Ari­ane 6 and the launch fail­ures of the Vega‑C light launch­er had deprived Europe of autonomous access to space, which is cru­cial to regain­ing its sov­er­eign­ty. Lionel Suchet, inter­im CEO of the French Nation­al Cen­tre for Space Stud­ies (CNES), looks back on the suc­cess­ful launch of Ari­ane 6 in March 2025 and out­lines the prospects for the launch vehi­cles in Europe.

Lionel Suchet. This suc­cess fol­lows on from the maid­en flight of Ari­ane 6 in July 2024, which was already a near-total suc­cess. The deor­bit­ing of the third stage, which could not be car­ried out dur­ing the first qual­i­fi­ca­tion flight, was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed in March 2025. This is a unique fea­ture of Ari­ane 6 com­pared to Ari­ane 5: in line with sus­tain­able devel­op­ment prin­ci­ples, the upper stage is redi­rect­ed towards the atmos­phere to disintegrate.

The stakes were high for Europe. First­ly, because these flights, to which we can add the return to flight of Vega‑C, mark the return of full auton­o­my of access to space for the con­ti­nent. Sec­ond­ly, because Ari­ane 6’s first com­mer­cial flight enabled the launch of the CSO‑3 mil­i­tary obser­va­tion satel­lite (Edi­tor’s note: the third and final satel­lite in the MUSIS pro­gramme, mark­ing the com­ple­tion of the mil­i­tary space capa­bil­i­ty renew­al cycle pro­vid­ed for in the 2024–2030 mil­i­tary pro­gram­ming law), at a time when the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic was dis­cussing Euro­pean sov­er­eign­ty with his coun­ter­parts in Brussels.

Final­ly, from a com­mer­cial point of view, because Ari­ane 6’s order books are full, with cus­tomers from both Europe and out­side Europe, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Unit­ed States, who did not want to rely sole­ly on SpaceX. We have demon­strat­ed that Ari­ane 6 is a reli­able part­ner at a cru­cial moment in the his­to­ry of inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion in the space sector.

This is an extreme­ly impor­tant issue, for obvi­ous rea­sons relat­ing to cost and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. We have been work­ing on it for sev­er­al years through the Cal­lis­to and Themis projects, and today there are no longer any major tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges to over­come. The first launch­es will take place very soon: first at low alti­tude next year, then longer flights, until we achieve a recov­er­able flight by 2030. 

But we must bear in mind that it is not just a ques­tion of mas­ter­ing the reusabil­i­ty of the launch­er from a tech­no­log­i­cal point of view: it also requires a pro­found change in the way we man­u­fac­ture them. Today, pro­duc­tion is scaled to pro­duce a dozen Ari­ane 6 launch­ers per year. With the advent of a reusable launch­er, the num­ber of launch­ers pro­duced each year will auto­mat­i­cal­ly decrease. It is there­fore clear that the entire eco­nom­ic and indus­tri­al mod­el, as well as the entire learn­ing curve, will be impact­ed. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are work­ing on this, and we are sup­port­ing them.

Europe, and France in par­tic­u­lar, has excep­tion­al resources, exper­tise and facil­i­ties, includ­ing the CSG, which is unique­ly locat­ed. Its prox­im­i­ty to the equa­tor means that launch­es to the east can take full advan­tage of the sling­shot effect caused by the Earth­’s rota­tion. Its loca­tion on the Atlantic coast also means that rock­ets do not fly over land, and there­fore poten­tial res­i­den­tial areas, when launch­ing north or east. The base is also pro­tect­ed from severe weath­er phe­nom­e­na such as cyclones. 

We there­fore have a very strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed site. The mod­erni­sa­tion pro­grammes, which began two to three years ago and are due to be com­plet­ed in 2026, aim to make the base more ener­gy effi­cient, increase launch rates and enable the oper­a­tion of dif­fer­ent launch­ers, includ­ing Ari­ane 6 and Vega‑C, of course, but also reusable demon­stra­tors and mini and micro-launch­ers, such as the par­tial­ly reusable light launch­er Maia, which is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment. The goal is to make the cen­tre a tru­ly mul­ti-launch­er port.

The com­par­i­son is cer­tain­ly strik­ing… How­ev­er, sev­er­al fac­tors must be tak­en into account. First, we could con­sid­er increas­ing the launch rate, which is always a pos­si­bil­i­ty. But it is impor­tant to note that the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can approach­es to space are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. The Unit­ed States wants to occu­py the field in every sense of the word: set­ting foot on Mars, estab­lish­ing lunar bases, increas­ing the num­ber of satel­lites in orbit, pro­vid­ing com­mer­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices to the entire globe, etc. This is lead­ing in par­tic­u­lar to Elon Musk’s mega-con­stel­la­tions. Let’s remem­ber that not so long ago, only 2,000 satel­lites were orbit­ing the Earth. Today, there are 9,000, includ­ing 7,000 Star­link satel­lites, with plans to increase this num­ber to 40,000. Europe, mean­while, has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent approach to space devel­op­ment, which it wants to be both ratio­nal and rea­son­able. Meet­ing our needs in the com­ing years will there­fore involve deploy­ing a few hun­dred satel­lites at most, in par­tic­u­lar the IRIS² con­stel­la­tion, signed by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion at the end of last year, which will com­prise 300 satel­lites. Euro­pean launch capa­bil­i­ties will be suf­fi­cient for this.

The use of nuclear pow­er would con­tribute to our sov­er­eign­ty in the space indus­try, as some appli­ca­tions can­not rely on solar pan­els alone, for exam­ple, per­ma­nent instal­la­tions on the Moon or mis­sions to explore the dis­tant solar sys­tem. As both a major space pow­er and a major nuclear pow­er, France has the tech­no­log­i­cal and indus­tri­al capa­bil­i­ties to devel­op both small sys­tems such as RHU (radioiso­tope heater units) and RTG (radioiso­tope ther­mo­elec­tric gen­er­a­tors) for pro­duc­ing heat and elec­tric­i­ty, and micro-pow­er plants for pro­pelling heavy space­craft or for pro­duc­ing ener­gy on a pos­si­ble future lunar base.

But oth­er ques­tions arise. First­ly, there is the ques­tion of soci­etal accep­tance of such launch­es, giv­en their loca­tion in French Guiana, and sec­ond­ly, there is the bud­getary issue: the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of Kourou, but above all the devel­op­ment of the sys­tems will require sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial invest­ment – sev­er­al bil­lion euros for the micro pow­er plants. We will there­fore need to seek to pool civ­il and mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions as much as pos­si­ble, but also ter­res­tri­al and space applications.

How much pri­or­i­ty should be giv­en to this issue in the cur­rent con­text, which requires sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment on many fronts? This is a ques­tion that polit­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ers will have to decide at Euro­pean level.

Interview by Anne Orliac