A Critical Look: European Orbital Launch

A few years ago, in 2021, Arianespace achieved a milestone: it conducted 15 successful launches in a year. That launch total was well above the ~10 launches the company usually conducted annually.

Recently, though, Arianespace hasn’t even come close to that annual average. In 2022, the company launched just five times. By 2023’s end, Arianespace will have launched 1/5th of its 2021 record—three. 

Why are European launches declining? Is Soyuz to blame? Is it because Ariane 6 isn’t ready? Is it something else?

What is “European” Space Launch?

Arianespace’s launch numbers are declining, but not as severely as people believe. Over twenty years ago, the European Union (EU), European Space Agency (ESA), and French launch company Arianespace decided to rely on Russia to build and launch rockets for Europe. They became middlemen between customers and Russia.

The rocket was nothing new or radical—just the reliable and ancient Soyuz. The Europeans’ use of the Soyuz allowed Europe to “fudge” its launch numbers, making “European” launches look much higher. Arianespace interfaced with Russia’s Starsem, allowing the French company to take credit for higher annual launch cadences, primarily driven by Soyuz rocket launches. 

Perhaps the money flowing through Arianespace to Starsem somehow contributed significantly to the European space economy. Using the rocket provided growth opportunities in the form of capturing more customers. 

The less expensive and more available Soyuz rocket attracted customers who would otherwise have passed Arianespace by. Those customers could contract with a European company to use the lower-cost Soyuz instead of going to Russia directly. Politically, it looked better.

The use of Soyuz at Arianespace’s launch complex in Kourou (which is close to the equator) allowed access to more orbits without compromising its upmass capability. The Soyuz launches didn’t require customers to wait for another customer’s payload, compared to the Ariane 5, which usually launches two spacecraft at a time. 

Capturing more customers using Soyuz, while not manufacturing an in-Europe alternative, appears to have been shortsighted. The EU, ESA, and Arianespace invested in Russian assets, not European ones. How did launching the Soyuz, particularly from Baikonur (in Kazakhstan) and Vostochny (in Russia), benefit the European space industry and reinforce European space sovereignty?

Whatever the investments, they weren’t used to hire European workers to develop the Soyuz or work in a Soyuz assembly line. No Europeans designed new Soyuz rocket engines, nor were any manufactured in European factories. Europeans didn’t build the launch pads in Baikonur or Vostochny. 

Using Soyuz increased reliance on Russia while undercutting independence and security for European space. (Security is a key ESA goal.) Launching Russian rockets made the European space industry appear healthy and thriving. But the diversion of money to Russia eroded it. 

Until Russia invaded Ukraine, it was unclear that Europe wanted to wean itself off the Soyuz. What is clear is that European rocket launches conducted from Europe’s only operational orbital spaceport were lower than Arianespace’s numbers indicate. 

The Numbers Game: A Decline? Or Stasis?

Arianespace’s accounting includes Soyuz launches. The graph below provides the idea that a decent amount of annual “European” launches was conducted during the last five years. The launches Arianespace conducted go as high as three launches in a month. 

Subtract Soyuz launches from Arianespace’s totals, and the company’s annual launches fall by about half, getting worse in 2022, and again in 2023 with half of 2021’s launches without Soyuz—three. While European space sovereignty isn’t in peril (Japan launched twice this year), it is not that active, either.

Without Soyuz, Arianespace’s launches came to six in 2021, one shy of its 2019 and 2020 totals (five each year). 2021’s total was two launches over 2022’s four (when the Soyuz became unavailable) and 2023’s three. 

But here’s the thing—before Soyuz started launching for the company in 2011, Arianespace launched the Ariane 5 (the only rocket it had) about five to six times a year. The falling cadence is merely a return to that older launch cadence. During the years before 2022, the company launched European rockets at the same rate it had before 2011—five to six launches annually.

That lower launch cadence is comparable to launches from another nation: India. From 2019 through October 2023, India’s launch services conducted 20 launches. Europe’s launches without Soyuz? Twenty-two. 

Their annual launch averages were very close before 2022. Although—India has nothing like the Ariane 5, which lifted ~20,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit. The graph below shows their launch cadence differences from 2019 through October 2023.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Arianespace’s total for that year reveals just how reliant it and Europe were on Soyuz. The speed with which Soyuz was withdrawn from Arianespace’s services highlights how untethered the Russian launch system was from the rest of the company. However, it’s not as if Arianespace had a choice, and predicting the sudden retraction of Soyuz from European space would have gone against the odds before 2022.

The Soyuz was reliable and a good foil against global competitors. It would have been a decent system to use after the Ariane 5’s retirement. But Ariane 6 wasn’t ready in 2022, and it still isn’t. Soyuz is no longer an option. Europe’s launch situation--where its industry seems to be sliding towards launching less annually than Iran or North Korea--would have appeared less dire if Soyuz was still available.

Why Choose Soyuz?

The true risk with using Soyuz, it turns out, was politics and not technical odds. That and the diversion of European space investment to Russian companies results in an uncomfortable reality for Europeans: they have no current operational launch system (aside from Vega). They can’t compete against other large launch vehicles and can’t even launch their spacecraft. 

During the years leading up to the Soyuz’s withdrawal, the EU and ESA had to have known how reliant the European space launch industry had become on a Russian-provided launch system. They had plenty of time to research alternatives. 

The idea of using Soyuz for European launches was first entertained in 2002 (over 20 years ago). Some pushed the notion that it would help the European Space industry’s, specifically the Ariane 5’s, commercialization. The EU and ESA should have seen the idea’s fallacy.  

At the time, some believed that using the Soyuz for some launches would give Arianespace time to make Ariane 5 more commercially viable (Arianespace’s words). Ariane 5 was new and had failed during its first launch in 1996. By 2004, Arianespace marketed the Soyuz rocket as a way to achieve the “long-term viability of its launcher sector.” 

Even with an existing launch system that required just building a launch pad to take off from, it took ESA and Arianespace another seven years before the first launch of a Soyuz from Kourou in 2011. By the time 2011 rolled around, the Ariane 5 had built up an excellent reliability record, experiencing no failures since its 1996 debut.

During and since that time, the EU, ESA, and Arianespace all had the opportunity to develop an alternative (as United Launch Alliance had opportunities to build a U.S. rocket engine). The EU, in particular (a political organization), should have been very aware of the risks of relying on a Russian launch system run by Russians to bolster Europe’s launch numbers. 

Removing Soyuz from Arianespace’s launch numbers reveals that, while more commercialization might have happened, launches of Ariane 5 never increased. Whether that was due to a lack of customer demand, technical and process requirements, or factory output limitations, whatever European Space industry commercialization the Soyuz was supposed to contribute didn’t happen. 

No Bridge Across the Gap: Ariane 6

The CEO of ArianeGroup seemed to believe Ariane 6 would be ready in 2023. From a Politico article a year ago:

“...Roussel says that Ariane 6 will be ready for the launch of French military satellites and new Galileo spacecraft, part of the EU’s own geolocation constellation, and warned that Europe shouldn’t simply replace dependence on Russia with America.

“America is a strong ally but nevertheless it’s a dependency and that’s never good,” he said.

The problem that Roussel and his companies face is Ariane 6 won’t launch until late 2024...maybe. For Europe, the problem is larger, as ArianeGroup appears to have some kind of “government customer capture” with the EU and ESA. They are willing hostages to the company’s rocket development.

Ariane 6 was supposed to be ready for its first flight in 2020. Then, that goal was pushed back. Again. And again. As of August 2023, Ariane 6’s first launch might happen sometime in 2024. It’s not unusual for rocket programs to experience delays (see SLS, Starship, Vulcan, etc.), but the reasons for Ariane 6’s delays seem…strange. 

This is a significant challenge for Roussel, ArianeGroup, and Arianespace because their potential customers have missions to accomplish, and nonsense explanations only work for so long. For a customer to wait another year, five years after Ariane 6 was initially scheduled to fly, makes no sense. 

One of the customers wanting to support the European launch industry and launch on a European rocket was ESA. It makes sense for a European civil agency to support the European space industry by contracting with a European launch company. Instead, ESA did something shocking a few weeks ago: it contracted with SpaceX, an American company, to launch four Galileo satellites.

The satellites aren’t anything unique—just the latest European iteration of a satellite that provides navigation and timing data (Europe’s version of GPS). The decision to use SpaceX, however, goes against at least one of the EU’s justifications for its latest space policy: “enhances the EU's strategic autonomy.”

ESA wants to deploy its satellites in a reasonable time with no risk of another year’s delay. Going with SpaceX makes perfect sense. As a few ESA officials have stated in their justification for choosing SpaceX, they don’t have a choice. 

Ariane 5 was launched earlier this year. Europe’s Vega-C is still being critically reviewed since it appears to have reliability problems (it also carries smaller payloads). The Russian Soyuz and launch facilities that Arianespace relied upon are no longer available for European rebadging and use.

Ariane 6 is supposed to be at least as capable as the Ariane 5 it replaces—a good thing, as Ariane 5 was a reliable and capable rocket. Ariane 6 was extolled to be cheaper, about €75 million per launch versus €150 million. That’s a significant saving, except that now Arianespace released information stating the Ariane 6 savings will be 40% of the cost of an Ariane 5 launch, not 50%.  This is still a significant saving—except it doesn’t include the annual €350 million launch subsidy Europeans are paying for the Ariane 6.

Since Europe launched its last Ariane 5 this year, it has nothing to bridge the gap between that and the Ariane 6. It has no native way to launch large mass spacecraft into orbit. Not until late in 2024 at the earliest. And if that launch doesn’t come to pass, then European launches in 2024 might drop to 1 or 0 (depending on Vega-C). Again, Arianespace may launch as much or less than Iran and North Korea.

In hindsight, Europe’s undesirable launch state is a result of a series of shortsighted decisions. The most significant was when the EU, ESA, and Arianespace decided to rely on the Soyuz rocket for nearly half of European launches. That diverted investments from developing other European launch systems while providing a false sense of vigor in Europe’s launch industry. 

The decision to rely solely on ArianeGroup to build Ariane 6 and no competing systems from other companies made Europe’s predicament worse. Especially since Ariane 6 isn’t ready.

The result is that Europe, a space region with plenty of space companies and expertise, has no launch system to cater to them, except for Vega. While there are big plans for Ariane 6, they are on hold, with some customers transferring to non-European launch companies.

Barring problems with Ariane 6, Europe will likely recover, but it will also be re-starting from behind.

John Holst is the Editor/Analyst of Ill-Defined Space, dedicated to analysis of activities, policies, and businesses in the space sector.

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