Europe satellite operator cancels Ariane 6 plans, to go with SpaceX

Less than two weeks before its maiden flight, Europe’s weather satellite operator canceled plans to use the European rocket Ariane 6, choosing instead to partner with US company SpaceX.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the most recent setback for European space endeavors follows four years of postponements for the Ariane 6, which is slated to launch for the first time on July 9.

The MTG-S1 weather satellite will be launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket by the board of directors of EUMETSAT, which is composed of 30 member states. This request was made by the executive committee of EUMETSAT.

That would entail terminating the four-year-old agreement that EUMETSAT and Arianespace inked.

The third launch aboard an Ariane 6 rocket was supposed to be the MTG-S1 satellite, which was set to take off early in 2019.

The specific reason EUMETSAT abandoned the European rocket in favor of US entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX was not stated in the Le Monde article.

The CEO of France’s CNES space agency Philippe Baptiste said it was “quite a brutal change as the flight was supposed to take place very soon.”

“Clearly, today is a very disappointing day for European space efforts,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.

“I am impatiently waiting to understand what reasons could have led EUMETSAT to such a decision, at a time where all major European space countries as well as the European Commission are calling for launching European satellites on European launchers!

“How far will we, Europeans, go in our naivety?”

Baptiste called on the European Commission to “take the necessary measures so that all European institutional satellites are launched on small and large European launchers.”

Ariane 6’s long-awaited inaugural flight comes at a difficult time for European space efforts.

The years of Ariane 6 delays, setbacks for the lighter Vega-C launcher and Russia’s withdrawal of its Soyuz rockets has left Europe without an independent way to blast its missions into space.

Before the latest setback, Ariane 6 rockets had an order book of 30 missions, and planned to launch nine times a year.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket – which is reusable, unlike Ariane 6 – is planning 144 launches this year alone.