The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Wednesday that Europe intends to launch the first Ariane 6 rocket, its next-generation space launcher, in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The 22-nation agency earlier announced it will push out the first launch from 2022 to 2023 without providing any additional information.
ArianeGroup, a partnership between Airbus and Safran, is creating Ariane 6 for the ESA in an effort to lower launch costs in the face of fresh private competition from SpaceX and to safeguard Europe’s access to space.
The project, which cost just under $3.9 billion to develop and was supposed to make its debut in July 2020, has seen a number of setbacks.
Arianespace, a part of ArianeGroup, which operates the launches, announced it had received a total of 29 orders for Ariane 6 and 7, as well as one for the smaller Vega C, buoyed by a significant order from Amazon for its Project Kuiper constellation earlier this year.
Approximately three-quarters of Ariane 6 launches are anticipated to be from commercial clients, with institutional customers accounting for 60% of Vega C launches, which were developed in Italy.
The business is looking for other launch times for five missions, including the Euclid space telescope and the first in a series of extreme weather warning satellites, that were previously planned to launch on Russian Soyuz rockets.
The five launches would be split between Ariane 6, Vega C, and an undefined number of non-European launches, Arianespace Chief Executive Stephane Israel told reporters.
According to Reuters, ESA and SpaceX have started preliminary technical negotiations that could result in the temporary deployment of SpaceX launchers after the Ukraine war prevented Western access to Russian Soyuz rockets.
Industry sources have said up to two launches could be transferred to SpaceX.
The European agency plans to end operations of the three remaining Ariane 5 rockets in the first half of next year.
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