If you tend to always look at when news events line up to wonder if it's coincidence or pre-planned, especially if you're oriented toward watching the European Space Agency, today's your day to ask yourself the big questions.
The bigger news item is even hard to pick, but today the Ariane 6 launched its first payload to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO), a large weather satellite called the MTG-I2, from their Kourou, French Guiana launch facilities. Liftoff was at 4:10 PM EDT in the US or 2010 UTC.
The Ariane 6 successfully released the MTG-I2 into its GTO 36 minutes after liftoff.
The 8,400-pound (3,800 kilograms) MTG-I2 is the second imaging satellite in the Meteosat Third Generation network (hence the name). It will complete the three-spacecraft constellation in geostationary orbit, which lies 22,236 miles (35,786 kilometers) above Earth.
Its companions, MTG-I1 and MTS-S1, launched in December 2022 and July 2025, respectively. MTG-I1 is an imaging craft and MTS-S1 is a "sounder," using an infrared instrument to probe different layers of Earth's atmosphere.
Note that the MTG-I1 launch was on the Ariane 5, not 6, and the MTS-S1 launch was on a Falcon 9.
An Ariane 6 rocket launches the MTG-I2 weather satellite from Kourou, French
Guiana on Aug. 27, 2026. (Image credit: Arianespace)
Today's launch was the ninth to date for the Ariane 6, which can deliver up to 12.7 tons (11.5 metric tons) to GTO in its burliest configuration. For comparison, SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket has a GTO payload capacity of 9.15 tons (8.3 metric tons).
For the rest of the day's story, we need to switch to European Spaceflight which informs us that a group of planned upgrades to the Ariane 6 called Block 3 have been shelved.
The European Space Agency has confirmed to European Spaceflight that it is no longer considering the Ariane 6 Block 3 evolution, saying there is “no programme need or justification” for the evolution at this time.
Questions regarding the scrapping of the Block 3 upgrades arose earlier this month after SpaceScout reported that an ESA study team had been told Ariane 6 Block 2 would be the rocket’s final major version, forcing it to rework a proposed Enceladus mission, a planned probe to Saturn’s icy moon, that had been based on the more capable Block 3 variant of the four-booster Ariane 64 rocket. A key element of this now-scrapped evolution of Ariane 6 was the ICARUS lightweight upper stage.
The big picture gets a bit less clear as you keep reading, presumably because it talks about Ariane 6 features and plans that (as an "outsider") I have never heard of. Their conclusions, in two successive sentences are, "Ariane 6 would “not be developed further,”" and "“Ariane 6 will continue to evolve whenever new mission requirements justify further developments.”"
Today's mission certainly seems to have been successful, although we have no reports on the MTG-I2 itself, but it seems that the rocket did everything it should have done, so if there are failures in the weather satellite, it's the satellite's design and construction that are in question and not the Ariane 6. At the moment. Probably.
Well, they have now parts for a hopper that they are studying, and hope to fly before 2030. After which they will study the results of the hop, and plan to use those studies to inform the studies and plans for a re-usable prototype booster (Ariane 7?).
ReplyDeleteSo the less complacent and corrupt are probably digging in their heels agaist A6 'improvements' to accelerate re-usableprogress, and the establishment wants to continue milking the throwaways. The customers are probably torn between wanting new and inexpensive and knowing that any development for that will be extraordinarily expensive and a long long time coming.
In other news, Titanic Cruises will be redesigning the layout of their ship's deck chairs to be "more inclusive and consitent with our mission." I do not care if the Europeans self destruct. They are adults and make their own decisions. It bothers me that no American or New Zealand rocket company has been able to "reverse engineer" a reuseable rocket in the 16 years or so since the Falcon 9 came out.
ReplyDeleteBack in 2021, ULA was talking about developing reuse by ejecting the engines out of a booster and recovering those, because they're the most expensive part. Naturally, the first attempt has yet to appear because they just haven't gotten that "round tuit" yet. I wonder if they've spent any money it.
DeleteNew Glenn, of course, has landed twice so at least Blue Origin is moving in the right overall direction.
It popped into my head today when I saw a photo of B1067 coming into port that if they're going to try for the new world record with 1067, the leading contender, after all, they're going to need to ship it across country to Vandenberg. Why throw away those 37 flights worth of experience? Somehow, I'm more concerned about putting B1067 on a big ass truck and sending her down the interstate to California than launching it into space.
ReplyDeleteMarine transports are big, as we have seen with Ship Forty on Ship Forte, you might get a dozen on board one of them.
I don't know how many they'll relocate to Vandenberg, there may be launch constraints due to infrastructure (fueling, recovery, just plain parking...).
Is the SL constellation done, and they are just maintaining it and replacing 1st gen satellites with gen 2?
I did a check online and found this useful site: https://orbitalradar.com/how-many-starlink-satellites
DeleteI remembered seeing references to them wanting about 30,000 satellites for the SL constellation, and the last number I saw for what has launched so far just went over 11,000. Down a bit on that page it says the FCC papers show 42,000 as the target, and while they've launched like 11,045 that "active" satellites are 9822.
Part of that is satellites being de-orbited and part of it is due to some being in a very low orbit that just can't last as long as something higher. The low orbit is to minimize latency of the connection.