Q&A with Via Satellite’s New Satellite Executive of the Year Award Winner – Stéphane Israël, CEO, Arianespace

You completed an impressive 12 missions in 2015, 11 missions in 2016 and are set for another remarkable 12 missions in 2017. How do you see the trend of activity in 2018 and beyond?

Arianespace should maintain a sustained operational activity in the coming years with an order book composed of 54 launches for 31 customers (as of 13/02/2017): 20 Ariane 5, 8 Vega and 26 Soyuz, including a bulk of 21 launches ordered in 2015 for the OneWeb constellation project. There is no doubt that 2018 will also be very busy for Arianespace!

Are there certain factors or conditions that prevent Arianespace from launching even more missions? With its current capability, how many missions could Arianespace conceivably launch in a year without any delays?

Our infrastructure, teams and industrial processes are scaled to be able to operate, on average, 12 annual launches from the CSG, with a target of six Ariane 5, three Vega and three Soyuz. However, we are constantly demonstrating the availability and flexibility of our launchers in order to adapt to our customers’ needs. Indeed, in 2016, we were able to carry out seven Ariane 5 launches, including two dedicated launches at the beginning of the year, and one extra Soyuz launch. In 2017, we plan to launch again up to seven Ariane 5s, and our teams are already mobilized to perform six launches (three Ariane, two Soyuz, one Vega) within three months, between late January and late April. Moreover, the introduction of Vega C in 2019 and Ariane 6 in 2020, will significantly increase our launch rate capability, with a target of 12 Ariane 6 and 4 Vega flights per year. And in the meantime, we will use Baikonur and Vostochny cosmodromes to deploy, in parallel to CSG, the OneWeb constellation.

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the upcoming Ariane 6. How is the Ariane 6 project coming along? How will you design a rocket that provides Arianespace’s trademark reliability at a lower cost than your competitors?

With the signature of the program in November 2016, Ariane 6 is now on track for a maiden flight in 2020. Ariane 6 will be the synthesis of ultra-advanced technologies and cutting edge expertise, of all the new processes and techniques now being industrialized, such as 3D printing, additive manufacturing, friction stir welding or laser surface treatment, and that’s without even mentioning the new Vulcain restartable engine.

These new developments and processes will make Ariane 6 more flexible, modular and of course competitive as production cost are cut by 40% as compared to Ariane 5. To do so, everything has been improved and rationalized by our industrial prime and main shareholder Airbus Safran Launchers–like the implementation of the horizontal assembly of the launch vehicle–to create real production flows, just like an aircraft assembly line. In a nutshell: Ariane 6 will benefit from Ariane 5 industrial know-how, which is key for maintaining the highest level of reliability and guaranteeing time-to market. At the same time, we will have powerful tools for cutting costs.

Some market analysts have said that if all of the satellite constellations that are planned for the next decade became a reality, we could quickly arrive to a point where the entire launch market would have to complete one or more missions per day just to keep up with the demand. In your view, how accurate is this prediction? What is your take on the reality of constellations?

According to some market analysis, if all the constellation projects announced so far were to succeed, this would correspond to more than 15,000 satellites to be launched over the next decade, and to an average of 520 tons to be put into orbit each year. However, it is doubtful whether all these projects will materialize…leading to one launch per day. Regarding Arianespace, with a modular Ariane 6, a more powerful Vega and the multi-launch pad capability of Soyuz, we have strong assets to answer an increasing demand for launches. And the lox-methane engine Prometheus is another investment of ours towards increasingly greater launch capability and flexibility. In addition to these solutions and innovations, shall we go for a dedicated micro-launcher to launch more often? We’ll see!

In today’s current political environment, some of the world’s largest space-faring nations are becoming much more isolated and adverse to international cooperation. Does this concern you? Will this have any impact on the development of commercial space?

Space should remain an area for international cooperation. Being a European company, operating two European launchers, Ariane and Vega, and cooperating at the highest levels with Roscosmos and Russian industry on Soyuz, we are 100% committed to the success of such  partnerships. And commercial space should not be affected by any geopolitical tension. It would be bad news for everybody.