Europe Debuts New Ariane 6 Rocket Successfully... Mostly. What Went Wrong?

I was the lead engineer for those on-board cameras for A6! Great to hear praise from the man himself! We actually flew the same system on A5 for the JWST launch

I've been working on the Vinci engine for years so for me and all of my colleagues it was an long awaited launch. This was an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime moment of both stress and euphoria. It feels like a total success for us, considering the intense pressure and hard work required to make Ariane 6 possible! People sometimes don't realize that rocket science is REALLY hard, getting everything right on the maiden flight is quite an achievement. Thank you Scott for your in-depth analysis, it was great and thorough as always!

That launch trajectory is looking a lot like my KSP launch trajectories

The Ariane's boosters are made in Colleferro, Italy. My town!🙂🙂

It's intresting to see how hard it is to relight a space engine, while in KSP it's just "whatever, I'll do a very unoptimise trajectory and yoloing the thrust"

Vinci is actually a clean sheet engine design, it was on paper for many years, but was always a clean sheet design. With basically 3x the thrust of the old HM-7B and a 15s ISP improvement. While the Vinci has higher thrust, the RL10 still has lower mass, NASA crunched the numbers and found that the lighter RL10 was better for sending payloads into deep space. Gas generators for tank pressurization aren't a new thing. Solid cartridges for tank pressurization have been studied and solid cartridges for spin starting were used in multiple vehicles. However, I believe liquid gas generators are new. ULA had a concept like this called the integrated vehicle fluids I'm pretty sure, where they would have a small hydrogen/oxygen otto cycle combustion engine, either a straight four or straight six that would provide electricity, while the exhaust would be tapped off for tank pressurization and RCS.

For the Ariane 6 compared to the Ariane 5, they chose to build it with less efficiency in mind in order get it cheaper to build. Basicly, a trade off to keep competitive price for their clients. The payload was replacable stuff (universities cubesats, prototypes in testing phases from the European newspace, that kind of stuff - the university cubesats were there for free btw, which is very cool, I don't know for the rest of the payload) because it was a test flight and evidently no one wants to loose a precious payload during a test. For this inaugural test flight, that Ariane 6 was packed with sensors to get as much data as possible, so there will be a lot to analyse in the coming days, but as far as we know of for now, everything went perfectly nominal with no deviation detected whatsoever until the 3rd ignition that failed as you described (part of the test was to see how that last stage would behave in micro-gravity, something that can't be tested on land, so such a fail is less a problem, more of a possible outcome that now needs to be analysed). From there, both the onboard system and the crew on land decided to abort anything of last step of the test (after a burn to put it on re-entry trajectory, it was supposed to release the 2 test prototypes of re-entry technology) - nobody wanted to add more space debris by forcing the release of the rest of the payload. No planed contract with their clients will be impacted by that failed third ignition. As a Frenchman, I can tell you that it was a very long awaited launch, and despite the perfect record of Ariane 5 since its chaotic first launches, we were all very stressed out (precisely because of the chaotic debut of Ariane 5 - and of course the strategic importance of having a new Ariane). It's such a relief to have witnessed that succesful test!

I was waiting for your video since the launch. I spotted the payload at it's second orbit, when it was at 604 km height. I live in Hamburg, Germany and spotted a small bright point with 2 half circles going out from either side. Mind you, that was with my eyes, no telesscope or anything. I'm still flabbergasted. Seeing the Twilight effect for the first time and my first "rocket launch". Love your videos, lov e Luna

@scottmanley One small detail. The failed APU prevented the last burn needed to deorbit, not to push it into a higher orbit to release satellites. The reason the actual orbit was lower than planned was that if the APU had worked it would have pushed it into higher orbit by itself.

For anyone asking the second stage will deorbit in 15 to 25 years.

Not wrong about the onboard camera shots - beautifully sharp and stable !

Congrats to everyone who had a hand in making it possible.

I was at work, with people who worked on parts for this rocket. It was great to watch the liftoff, you could hear a pin drop.

Fast jets chasing space rockets is something that will never get old for me.

One othe thing to mention, is that the boosters also serve as the first stage of Vega C, which is meant to bring costs further down.

You can get a much better shot of the payload fairing in the 2 min compilation Ariane space shared on its youtube channel!

None the less a very good performance for a first flight! The main goal for Europe with Ariane 6 is to be independent from the US to launch his own satellites (military satellites and so on).

Always good for the west to have alternative rockets that are manufactured in the west.

What a data-dense video. Barely a wasted phrase or sentence. Great stuff!

Considering the spectacular service performed by ESA, Arianespace, and Ariane 5, in launching the James Webb Space Telescope, and many other platforms, I'm willing, as I'm sure many commercial and government customers are, very willing to give Ariane 6 the benefit of fixing issues that happen during test missions like this. At least it didn't blow up or crash into the ocean. ;p