The last Ariane 5 flight, scheduled for takeoff Friday evening from Kourou in French Guiana, has been postponed to an unspecified date due to an anomaly, Arianespace announced Thursday. “It appeared that there is a risk of redundancy of a critical function on Ariane 5. In accordance with security requirements, Arianespace has decided to postpone the deployment of the launcher,” the company explained in a tweet. “Analysis is underway to determine a new launch date,” added Arianespace, responsible for operating European launchers.
This 117th and final flight of the European rocket, which bids farewell after 27 years of service, is to place a French military communications satellite (Syracuse 4B) and an experimental German satellite into orbit. “The launcher and the Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit and Syracuse 4B satellites are in the final assembly building in a stabilized configuration and in all the required safety conditions,” according to Arianespace. Takeoff was scheduled for Friday between 9:26 p.m. and 10:01 p.m. GMT from the Guiana Space Center (CSG).
This last flight comes in a low period for Europe in space, almost deprived of autonomous access to space while waiting for Ariane 6, while competition is raging. At issue: the sudden end of the operation of Russian Soyuz rockets, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which plunged the activity of the Kourou base. The failure of the first commercial launch of the light launcher Vega C, in December 2022, and the cumulative delays for the future Ariane 6 have aggravated the situation: after the last flight of Ariane 5, there will only be one Vega launch left in September, and a probable return to flight of Vega-C at the end of the year.
