Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, December 3 (Xinhua)-- after a four-year delay, a new generation of European heavy rockets has finally set a launch date.

The European Space Agency (ESA) Ariana 6 (Ariane 6) carrier rocket will conduct its first space flight between June 15 and July 31, 2024, when it will carry a group of small satellites, including two from NASA, the test team announced.

Image of ▲ Ariane 6, source: last week, the European Space Agency completed a critical ignition test of the scale model of the heavy rocket on the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, which ESA Director Joseph Ashbach (Josef Aschbacher) said was a major milestone.

Assuming all goes well and nothing big happens, we expect the Ariana 6 rocket to make its maiden flight between June 15 and July 31 next year.

However, he also mentioned, "this is a gamble involving rocket science, so one can expect delays of one kind or another."

CTOnews.com found that the Ariana V rocket conducted more than 100 missions between 1996 and 2023, including the James Weber Space Telescope, the Jupiter ice satellite JUICE probe and the Rosetta comet probe, as well as more than a dozen Galileo navigation satellites.

Europe has previously stressed the need for independent space launch capabilities, but ESA has recently relied on SpaceX, such as the Euclid Space Telescope launched on July 1, due to the delay of a new generation of Ariana 6 rockets.

On November 23, 2023, the Ariana 6 test model on the French launch pad of Guidanakuru is being tested for more than seven minutes.

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