One successful test launch doesn’t mean that Europe’s struggles in the space race are over.
KOUROU, French Guiana — First came the fire, then the roar and the rumble through the rainforest, and seconds later the four years of delay to Europe's Ariane 6 were, for a moment at least, forgotten as the rocket disappeared into cloud.
The maiden Ariane 6 mission may have worked — save only for the stalled third ignition of the upper stage for reentry — but it's a long way from a success story. It flew its final mission last year, freezing Europe's space ambitions for a year. POLITICO spoke to space officials past and present, both on and off the record, to find out what went wrong with Ariane 6.
Compare that to SpaceX. Fed by a steady stream of Pentagon and industry contracts, in addition to missions for its own Starlink satellite constellation, Musk's company carried out a record 96 launches in 2023. While Caroline Arnoux, who runs the Ariane 6 program at Arianespace, talks up an"impressive" order book for the freshly flown rocket of 29 launches over the next three years, the early results of competition between her company and SpaceX aren't promising.
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