By BlueShift | 2025-12-23

The new Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on December 17, successfully placing two navigation satellites into orbit in its fourth commercial mission.

The VA266 flight was the first launch of Galileo satellites on Europe’s newest heavy-lift launcher Ariane 6, and the rocket's fifth launch.

The satellites (SAT 33 and SAT 34), which are now in the early operations and in-orbit testing phase, will join the European Union's Galileo constellation -- a global navigation satellite system -- in medium Earth orbit.

Once they are fully operational, in three or four months, they will bring the total number of the constellation's active satellites to 29, ensuring even greater coverage and reliability, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

The addition will "improve the robustness of the Galileo system by adding spares to the constellation to guarantee the system can provide 24/7 navigation to billions of users," per the ESA, which oversees the program.

The launch and building out of the constellation reinforces "Europe's resilience and autonomy in space," it said.

The Galileo satellites were manufactured by European space and technology group OHB, which is based in Germany, under contract with the ESA.

The ESA was responsible for carrying out the Galileo launch, with Arianespace -- one of the biggest names in the commercial rocket industry -- on behalf of the European Commission.

Now that the satellites are in orbit, the EU Agency for the Space Program (EUSPA) is responsible for bringing them into service and overseeing their operation.

"Ariane 6 in its two-booster configuration was designed with Galileo in mind, and we now look forward to two more Galileo first-generation launches," said ESA director of space transportation Toni Tolker-Nielsen.

"This mission marks a remarkable close to 2025 for Europe: the fifth Ariane 6 launch overall and the first to deliver two large satellites in a single flight."

"It builds on Ariane’s proud legacy with Galileo – Ariane 5 placed 12 satellites in orbit across three missions – and now Ariane 6 firmly establishes itself as the reference launcher for Galileo."

Plans to develop reusable launcher

Ariane 6 delivered a weather satellite into orbit in August, and in November delivered a satellite for the European Union's observation program Copernicus.

Arianespace's next mission, planned for the first quarter of 2026, will be the first to use a four-booster version of Ariane 6, rather than the current two.

It is scheduled to launch 34 satellites for the Amazon Leo constellation (formerly known as Project Kuiper).

Previous Galileo satellites were primarily launched by Ariane 5 and Russian Soyuz rockets from Kourou. But after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Europe halted space cooperation with Moscow.

The loss of Russia's Soyuz rockets, and repeated delays to Ariane 6, left Europe without an independent way to blast missions into space for several months.

Before Ariane 6's first commercial flight in March, the ESA contracted SpaceX to launch two Galileo satellites in September 2024, AFP reported.

SpaceX has risen to dominate the booming commercial launch industry by developing rockets that are reusable -- which Ariane 6 is not.

"We have to really catch up and make sure that we come to the market with a reusable launcher relatively fast," ESA director Josef Aschbacher told AFP in October.

Several European aerospace firms are now bidding to develop the system for the ESA.