“We are worried,” says European rocket chief at prospect of launch competition

Emulating NASA —

On the continent, Ariane 6 may be the last launcher with a monopoly.

Peggy Hollinger and Sylvia Pfeifer, FT – Jan 9, 2024 2: 18 pm UTC

Artist's view of the configuration of Ariane 6 using four boosters on the ELA-4 launch pad together with its mobile gantry. — Enlarge / Artist’s view of the configuration of Ariane 6 using four boosters on the ELA-4 launch pad together with its mobile gantry.

ESA-D. Ducros

There is “no guarantee” France’s ArianeGroup will continue to be Europe’s rocket launch company of choice, according to the head of the European Space Agency, after ESA member states agreed to introduce more competition to the market.

Josef Aschbacher, the agency’s director-general, told the Financial Times that the decision at its space summit in Seville last November to open the European launcher market to competition was a “game-changer.”

The next generation of launch would be done “in a very different way,” he said, acknowledging that this would put pressure on ArianeGroup’s owners, Airbus and Safran. “If they have a very competitive launcher, then they are in the race. But there is no guarantee.”

Martin Sion, chief executive of ArianeGroup, which since 2017 has lost its dominance of the commercial launch market to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, said the company was ready for the challenge. “The rules are changing, we will adapt,” he said. “We are used to competition.”

However, Aschbacher’s comments, made in an interview late last year, are a clear warning to ArianeGroup, which has suffered serial delays on its latest launcher, Ariane 6, now expected to be four years late.

As a result of the delays, and problems with the smaller Vega-C, which is manufactured by Italy’s Avio, Europe has had to use SpaceX to send some of its most important satellites into orbit.

In November, France, Germany, and Italy agreed to inject new funds into the Ariane 6 program, but the rocket is not reusable and will still be more expensive than SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 when it finally launches around the middle of the year.

Guillaume Faury, Airbus chief executive, said in a separate interview that competition posed a serious challenge to ArianeGroup. “As one of the two shareholders, we are worried, as Ariane is today the incumbent,” he said. “The way to take our share is to make sure Ariane 6 will be a success.”

He acknowledged that Europe needed to find a more “market-driven” way to compete with lower-cost providers such as SpaceX but suggested it should not give up on Ariane in favor of a range of competing programs. Fragmentation would be “a disaster,” he said.

If the “result [of competition] is a different way being united around a small number of programs, where states put their efforts together to compete against the real competitors, which are . . . mainly SpaceX and the Chinese to come, that is OK,” he told the FT. “But the jury is out. For the moment what we observe is further fragmentation.”

Yet the ESA is determined to shake up the European commercial space sector by emulating the approach of NASA. Over the past two decades, the US space agency has shifted from buying rockets from incumbents such as Boeing and Lockheed’s United Launch Alliance to booking flight services.

By giving contracts to disruptive newcomers such as SpaceX, NASA has ensured the success of Elon Musk’s rocket company, and the cost of launching into space has fallen significantly.

“Competition is certainly the solution. It is a way of reducing cost and this is what we are planning to do in the next generation,” Aschbacher said. ESA has also challenged the private sector to develop a cargo vehicle that might eventually carry crew to the International Space Station by 2028, reducing its reliance on US providers.

Germany in particular is keen on more competition in the launcher market, as the home of some of Europe’s most advanced rocket start-ups such as Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg.

Although ArianeGroup was currently Europe’s only producer of heavy lift rockets, it was possible that new rivals could upset its monopoly for the generation after Ariane 6, said Caleb Henry, director of research at consultancy Quilty Space.

SpaceX “had a smaller rocket and reached space. That was enough to get . . . a significant chunk of the Department of Defense market,” he said. “So it is not at all a stretch to say someone developing a smaller rocket today could be making an Ariane-sized rocket tomorrow.”