Mission Accomplished! The European Ariane 6 rocket was successfully launched Tuesday on its very first mission – orbiting dozens of satellites. This inaugural flight marks the beginning of a new era of space transportation for Europe. But the European Space Agency will now have to offer attractive prices to get more orders in the face of fierce competition – especially from Elon Musk’s Space X.
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00:00is mission accomplished for the European Ariane 6 rocket, which successfully blasted off on Tuesday
00:07on its very first mission, carrying with it the continent's hopes of regaining independent access
00:13to space. But the team will now have to offer attractive prices in what is a fierce competition,
00:21especially with Elon Musk's SpaceX. To tell us a bit more, Julia Seager, our science editor,
00:26with me this afternoon. So after a four-year delay, Julia, this was an almost perfect blast
00:34off, wasn't it? Almost a perfect blast. And it was quite an incredible moment to witness this
00:39outburst of joy from the team on the ground in Kourou. You have people who have worked,
00:44hundreds of people who have worked on this project for years now, from Ariane Group,
00:47the CNES, but also ESA. Now yesterday, I told you a little bit more about all of the different
00:51manoeuvres that Ariane had to do to be able to carry out successfully this mission in orbit,
00:57from the ignition of the Vulcan engine and these two side boosters, which really enable
01:03the rocket to propel itself into space and defy gravity, then getting rid of those two rockets
01:08to be lighter and be able to go further into the atmosphere, and then the separation of the two
01:12different stages. And I also told you about this engine called Vinci on the upper stage of the
01:17rocket, while they were able to ignite it to take it further into orbit to then release the
01:22satellites. So all of that happened without hinder. But what didn't work is at the end of
01:26the mission, they were supposed to be able to reignite the engine a third time to redirect
01:31the upper stage towards Earth. And this is a way to deal with space debris, because upon
01:36re-entrance into the atmosphere, you have part of the debris that is going to disintegrate and burn
01:41up. And then the other part of the debris, I don't know if you know this, but it's actually crashed
01:45into the Pacific Ocean to a point that we call Nemo Point. This is the furthest from any land
01:51surface. This is somewhat of a graveyard for old satellites on Earth. So this space, Ariane 6 was
01:59really thought in that way for ecological reasons, but that's the part that didn't work. Now the rest
02:03of the mission was successful. It was hailed by Emmanuel Macron, but it was also hailed by NASA,
02:09Bill Nelson, because now NASA will also be able to order flights from Ariane 6,
02:15because there's a lot of collaboration when it comes to space explorations. So it's a big
02:19congratulations to all of the teams of the 13 European countries that have been working on this
02:23for years. They really encountered a lot of pitfalls, COVID, rising prices. One of their
02:28historical partners that also decided to go with SpaceX just recently. And this is what prompted
02:35Martin Science to use this phrase, which I think will become iconic, which is Ariane is back.
02:40Okay, so Ariane is back. But at the beginning, I asked this question about whether or not
02:44Europe can have independent access to space again. With this blast off, has that been achieved?
02:49Well, that's what we hope. This is only the first flight. But of course, the goal was to be able to
02:53restore some of Europe's sovereignty, because for the last year, Europe hasn't been able to send any
02:58satellites on its own into space. The reason why is because if you look at the heavy launchers,
03:03Ariane 5 retired a year ago, and then the Russian Soyuz were sidelined because of the invasion in
03:08Ukraine. And then if you look at the lighter launchers, Vega-C wasn't able to carry out its
03:13maiden flight. So literally, Europe was left without any means to send any satellites into
03:17space without having to go through other countries like the US, other companies like SpaceX. Now,
03:24the other goal was, of course, to be able to show SpaceX that it's still in the technological race.
03:29It's not a reusable rocket, but it has shown that it has technological innovations aboard.
03:36Julia Seager, thanks very much. Indeed.