Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Oct. 19, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) officials said Monday that the European Space Agency (ESA) is no longer using Russian Soyuz rockets, the agency's Euclid telescope may be launched on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in 2023.

The Euclid Infrared Space Telescope was scheduled to launch this year from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. But after ESA broke off contact with the Russian space agency, the two agencies stopped working together on the launch of the Soyuz rocket from French Guiana, and the Russian space agency evacuated 87 employees from the launch site. As a result, the Euclid Space Telescope will not go to space on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

ESA is looking to launch space telescopes with other rockets, including private space companies in the United States. Mark Mark Clampin, director of NASA's astrophysics department, reportedly told a meeting of the NASA Astrophysics Advisory Committee on Monday that ESA could launch the Euclid telescope from SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in mid-late 2023.

In August, ESA Director General Joseph Ashbach (Josef Aschbacher) said in an interview that ESA was in preliminary discussions with Elon Musk's SpaceX about the use of Falcon rockets for launch missions. At the time, ESA was still weighing rockets supplied by SpaceX, Japan or India. But Ashbach said the SpaceX "is more operational in these rockets and is definitely one of the backup launch plans we are considering."

Another option for ESA is the French company Ariana Space's heavy carrier rocket, but the maiden flight of the new Ariana 6 rocket will not take place until next year. ESA is now under pressure to find a replacement for the Soyuz rocket. "this is a wake-up call for us to realize that we have been too dependent on Russian Soyuz rockets," said ESA's Ashbach.

The European Space Agency is not the only agency that needs to find alternatives to rockets. In March, Russia stopped supplying rocket engines to the United States, prompting Northrop Grumman to announce that it would work with Firefly Airlines to build a rocket, eliminating the need for Russian rocket engines. However, before the new rocket was ready, Northrop Grumman had to use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket to send the Cygnus spaceship to the International Space Station in order to carry out the space cargo contract with NASA. The British company OneWeb has also been forced to sign a contract with rival SpaceX and the Indian space research group ISRO to put first-generation Internet satellites into orbit in six separate phases later this year.

From a feasibility point of view, the SpaceX rocket is the most suitable alternative to the Soyuz rocket, and the company is also accepting new customers from the European market. The Falcon 9 rocket plans to launch the SWOT altimeter satellite in December 2022, a joint mission of NASA, French Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency and British Space Agency to explore surface water and ocean topography.

Falcon 9 has as many as 18 launches this year, and SpaceX's main focus will be on more orbital travel.

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