Europe making Progress? What?

A bit over six and a half years ago, March of 2019,  Ariane Group and the French space agency CNES announced the creation of an "acceleration platform", called ArianeWorks, to speed development of future launch vehicles.  It sounds like a Skunk Works in concept.  Deep in the announcement, they let out a big idea. They were going to start working on a competitor that would emulate the SpaceX Falcon and be reusable.  It even resembled the Falcon. 

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket's first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

"This milestone marks the beginning of the 'combined tests,' during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad's mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions," the company said.

There was a brief mention of the Themis vehicle having arrived in Sweden for these tests back at the start of this July (second part of a Small News Roundup).  

For completeness, it's not as if the European space community wasn't aware of the efforts as SpaceX went through their design iterations to finally get a Falcon 9 to land on the Cape Canaveral Landing zone in December of 2015 and the first landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic a few months later.  I have read (and posted) words from the European Space Agency that they didn't think reusable rocketry would be good for Europe because they viewed their space program as "make work" done to create jobs in Europe.  At some level, though, they had to realize the real result would be they would launch less and create fewer jobs as customers who had come to the ESA for launch service would instead switch over to those who dropped the cost with reusability.   

[B]y the middle of 2017, the space agency began to initiate programs that would eventually lead to a reusable launch vehicle. They included: 

• Prometheus engine: In mid-2017, the space agency started funding the reusable Prometheus engine, fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, with a thrust comparable to SpaceX's Merlin 1-D engine. Designed by ArianeGroup, Prometheus completed two long test firing campaigns this year.
• Callisto program: France, Germany, and Japan began collaborating in late 2017 to develop a subscale demonstrator of vertical takeoff and vertical landing technologies. It was a smaller-scale version of SpaceX's Grasshopper program and used propulsion based on liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Flights of this vehicle have been repeatedly delayed, and now will occur no earlier than 2027.
• Themis program: This program started later, but is further along. After Themis' adoption by member states in November 2019, The European Space Agency contracted directly with ArianeGroup to build a first stage rocket, with landing legs, and using the Prometheus engine. This program sought to be less experimental than Callisto, and feed directly into a rocket that could succeed Ariane 6. This is the vehicle on the pad in Sweden.

Europe's reusable rocket demonstrator, Themis. Credit: ArianeGroup

While I'd like to believe that flight tests will be "any day now," it's worth remembering that the program is several years behind schedule.  In that 2019 announcement mentioned above, Themis was intended to make its first hop tests in 2022.  

The Themis T1H vehicle will likely undergo only short hops, initially about 100 meters. A follow-up vehicle, Themis T1E, is intended to fly medium-altitude tests at a later date. Some of the learnings from these prototypes will feed into a smaller, reusable rocket intended to lift 500 kg to low-Earth orbit. This is under development by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup.

While we see reports of Chinese rockets making good progress, as well as Japan, every week puts SpaceX another few launches ahead of everyone else.  I watch videos of SpaceX missions more often than I go out in the yard to watch them.  Familiarity has made me dismiss launches to some trajectories (mostly to the northeast) as not being rewarding enough to go outside.  I don't recall a mission where I didn't think it's just amazing to watch these guys make routine these things that nobody else has done before.  These other launch services had a lot of catching up to do.