First launch of the European Ariane 6 rocket

The powerful European-built Ariane 6 rocket made its long-awaited liftoff on Tuesday as the region returned to a launch market dominated by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Ariane 6, more than 200 feet tall and powered by its Vulcain engine and a pair of booster rockets, was launched from Kourou, French Guiana, at 3 p.m. EDT and then successfully reached orbit.

The rocket is a joint project of about $4.5 billion overseen by the European Space Agency (ESA) and built by ArianeGroup, a joint venture of Airbus and Safran. Thirteen countries are contributing to the Ariane 6 programme.

It is the latest in a line of European rockets that dates back to the 1970s and succeeds the Ariane 5, which was launched 117 times until it was retired last year. The Ariane 6 comes in two versions: Ariane 62, with two solid rocket boosters that can deliver up to 10,000 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO), and Ariane 64, a model with four solid rocket boosters that can carry up to 21,000 kilograms to LEO.

In the launch market, Ariane 6 belongs to the “heavy” class of rockets.

Ariane 6's debut flight is a demonstration mission for ESA and will carry a variety of small satellites and spacecraft. After liftoff, the flight will last almost three hours before completing the deployment of 11 spacecraft, and also includes a series of key tests of the rocket's upper stage engine.

The Ariane 6's maiden voyage has been postponed for years, with delays fuelled by technical problems, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Following its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, Russia suspended all European mission launches in its Soyuz rockets. A smaller alternative European rocket, the Vega-C, has been grounded since a failed launch in 2022 and is not expected to fly again until later this year at the earliest.

Despite rising costs and long delays, European leaders continue to support the Ariane 6 programme, stressing the importance of the continent having its own access to space, rather than relying on SpaceX.

But Europe has already had to turn to SpaceX several times out of necessity, as the company enjoys a near-monopoly on the global launch market.

SpaceX’s reusable and relatively low-cost Falcon 9 rockets offer an attractive alternative to the spacecraft that have been waiting for Ariane 6 to begin flying. High-profile ESA missions, such as the EarthCARE spacecraft, the Euclid telescope and the Galileo satellites, have already been launched on SpaceX rockets.

Last month, European weather satellite operator EUMETSAT made the “exceptional” decision to shift an upcoming planned satellite launch from Ariane 6 to Falcon 9, a move that was met with derision by other European officials.

“I am looking forward to understanding what reasons could have led Eumetsat to take such a decision,” wrote Philippe Baptiste, head of the French space agency CNES, in a post on social media.

“How far will we Europeans go in our naivety?” Baptiste added.

It is worth noting that while most American companies looking to challenge SpaceX are leaning toward reusable rocket technology, Ariane 6 is expendable, like its predecessor, meaning each vehicle is unique and is discarded after the mission.

It is not just Europe's desire to have its own access to space that is driving Ariane 6. The rocket has another crucial client waiting for launches: AmazonThe US tech giant has ordered a staggering total of 97 rocket launches from five companies, almost a fifth of which were acquired by Arianespace to fly the Project Kuiper internet satellites on Ariane 6.