WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency conducted a long-duration firing of an Ariane 6 prototype Nov. 23, one among the ultimate tests before the agency is able to set a date for the rocket’s inaugural launch.
The Vulcain 2.1 engine within the core stage of the Ariane 6 test model ignited at about 3:44 p.m. Eastern on the launch pad at Kourou, French Guiana. The beginning of the test was delayed by nearly 45 minutes when the countdown was stopped at 2 minutes and 42 seconds due to what ESA called “a small anomaly within the transient threshold pressure.”
The test firing was scheduled to last 470 seconds, mimicking a full burn of the core stage on an actual launch. Controllers announced a shutdown on the expected time, although the performance of the engine appeared to alter in the ultimate minute of the burn.
ESA said Ariane 6 “passed” the test in a press release shortly afterwards, describing it as a “seven-minute full firing” of the engine, fairly than the nearly eight minutes advertised beforehand.
“The teams from ArianeGroup, CNES and ESA have now run through every step of the rocket’s flight without it leaving Earth,” said Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA, within the statement. ArianeGroup is the prime contractor for the rocket and CNES is the French space agency.
“This milestone rehearsal comes after years of designing, planning, preparing, constructing and labor from among the finest space engineers in Europe,” he said. “We’re back on the right track towards resecuring Europe’s autonomous access to space.”
Aschbacher and other ESA officials said this full-duration static-fire test was one among the last tests before the agency would announce a launch period for the primary Ariane 6. “Depending on the final result of this test, afterwards I can be able to announce a launch date for Ariane 6 for the inaugural flight,” he said during a Nov. 6 press briefing after a session of the European Space Summit in Seville, Spain.
There may be another hot-fire test of the Ariane 6 upper stage, examining its performance in degraded conditions. That test, at a facility in Germany, is scheduled for December.
Martin Sion, chief executive of ArianeGroup, said in an organization statement there are a couple of additional tests of the rocket to “show fault tolerance,” in addition to ship the flight hardware for the primary launch to Kourou and perform a launch system qualification review. But, he said, “Ariane 6 now has a core stage and an upper stage which have undergone all testing crucial to be ready for the inaugural flight.”