WASHINGTON — As Arianespace prepares for its first commercial Ariane 6 launch, the company is projecting a manifest for the vehicle backloaded to the second half of the year.
Arianespace is working towards a Feb. 26 launch of an Ariane 6 carrying the CSO-3 reconnaissance satellite for the French military. The launch, from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, will be the first for the rocket since its inaugural flight last July.
Arianespace considers this mission, designed VA263, the first commercial flight of the Ariane 6 since the company, rather than ESA, will be overseeing it. “This marks the start of the Ariane 6 operating phase, and it’s an honor to open this new era for Arianespace,” David Cavaillolès, chief executive of Arianespace, said in a statement.
The launch will also be the first for Cavaillolès since joining the company in January as chief executive. He succeeded Stéphane Israël, who had been chief executive since 2013 but left to become a partner at Boston Consulting Group.
Cavaillolès made his debut as chief executive of Arianespace on the conference circuit during a panel at the European Space Conference Jan. 28. “We have a very steep ramp-up plan,” he said of the Ariane 6 flight rate. “This year we target to achieve five flights of Ariane 6, the first one being in February, and then we want to reach our target cadence as soon as possible. By target cadence, I mean between 9 and 10 launches per year.”
That long-term target remains unchanged from past comments by Arianespace officials, although at the World Space Business Week conference in September, the company was projecting six Ariane 6 launches in 2025. That was before the second launch, originally planned for late 2024, slipped into 2025.
However, there will be a long pause after the Ariane 6 launch of CSO-3. At the conference, Arianespace announced an agreement with Eumetsat to launch the Metop-SG-A1 polar-orbiting weather satellite on the second commercial Ariane 6 mission, VA264, in August. That satellite was already set to fly on Ariane 6 but Arianespace said it was moving the satellite up to the VA264 launch.
Arianespace has not disclosed a schedule for the remaining Ariane 6 launches it plans for the final four months of 2025, but said one will carry the Sentinel-1D radar imaging satellite for the ESA/European Commission Copernicus program of Earth observation satellites. Arianespace said it signed an agreement with ESA for that launch at the same time it moved up the Eumetsat launch.
Cavaillolès, at the conference, did not state when Arianespace would reach that target of 9–10 Ariane 6 launches a year, but noted the company needed to do so quickly to serve a backlog of commercial launches, one dominated by Amazon’s Project Kuiper constellation, which acquired 18 Ariane 6 launches in 2022.
“My focus in the short term is to deliver the ramp-up, to deliver the Kuiper contract with Amazon and, of course, to deliver the institutional contract with the European Commission and ESA,” he said.
Cavaillolès added at the conference that he is thinking ahead to plans for the IRIS² secure connectivity constellation by the European Union, which is projected to require 13 Ariane 64 launches in 2029 and 2030.
“IRIS² will be one big topic this year,” he said. “This year, my priority will be to discuss with our industrial and institutional partners to make IRIS² a reality. I feel a real will to make it happen. Now, the devil is in the details.”
