South America to The Stars: The 25-year Journey of Europe's Ariane 5 Rocket

South America to The Stars: The 25-year Journey of Europe's Ariane 5 Rocket

For a quarter century, Ariane 5 has been Europe’s heavy-lift workhorse. Flying from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, Ariane 5 has carried to space a long series of commercial and scientific missions. Notable payloads include the European Space Agency’s comet-chasing Rosetta, a dozen of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites—orbited with just three launches—the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope and, in April 2023, the European Space Agency’s Juice mission to Jupiter.

Ariane 5 more than doubled the mass-to-orbit capacity of its predecessor, Ariane 4, which flew from 1988 until 2003 as a favorite of the telecommunications industry with its need to put large payloads into very high geosynchronous orbits. Ariane 5’s capacity enabled it to orbit two large telecommunications satellites on a single launch, or to push very large payloads into deep space.

After 117 flights, Ariane 5 is being replaced by an all-new launch vehicle, Ariane 6.

Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Duration: 1 minute, 47 seconds

Release Date: June 14, 2023

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