The European Space Agency and its partners have announced a July 9 launch date for the first Ariane 6 rocket.

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With Ariane 6 yet to begin launches and Vega C still grounded, Avio is relying on its growing defense propulsion business to pick up the slack.

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A large launch vehicle could end up having a big effect on the small launch vehicle market through low prices and encouraging customers to build larger satellites.

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The launch industry is negotiating a transition into new families of launch vehicles, working to bring additional capacity into the market while seeking out competitive advantages against a growing number of competitors.

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European space giants are putting the final touches on a proposal for a sovereign broadband constellation they say is inspired by Starlink but will not be a copy of SpaceX’s network from across the Atlantic.

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The European Space Agency and European Commission have selected five launch companies to participate in a new program to provide flight opportunities for new technologies, a sign of a greater role the European Union seeks to play in launch.

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Amazon is seeking to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit filed in August that alleged that the company’s board of directors acted in bad faith when it awarded Project Kuiper launch contracts to Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance.

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With the successful completion of a core stage hot-fire test, the European Space Agency says it now expects the first launch of the Ariane 6 to take place in the middle of 2024.

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Even before Rocket Lab's Sept. 19 launch failure, people were tossing around the word “monopoly” when it came to SpaceX. It had become increasingly clear that companies needing to launch their satellites in the near future had few options beyond SpaceX, particularly those spacecraft too large to launch on a small vehicle like Electron, as other launch providers stumbled. “Having such a dominant launch service provider is probably not healthy in general for the commercial prospects of the industry,” Vikram Nidamaluri, managing director of the telecom, media, and entertainment group at investment banking firm Lazard, told World Satellite Business Week attendees the week before. “No one wants a monopoly choking off one point of the value chain.”

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A Vega rocket successfully launched a dozen small satellites Oct. 8 while its more powerful version remains grounded for another year.

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The return to flight of Europe’s Vega C small launch vehicle has slipped to late 2024 after the European Space Agency concluded a rocket motor nozzle needs to be redesigned.

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Launches for OQ Technology’s narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) constellation are set to resume Oct. 4 after Arianespace moved the Luxembourg venture to its next Vega mission, instead of an upgraded version of the rocket that failed last year.

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The three companies with multibillion-dollar contracts to launch Amazons’s Project Kuiper constellation say they are committed to deploying those satellites on schedule despite delays in the development of their vehicles.

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Arianespace will launch a small geostationary communication satellite for Intelsat on an Ariane 6 in 2026, a sign of a stable, but diminished, role for such satellites in the commercial launch market.

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ESA plans to set a target launch period for the first Ariane 6 in October, with the hopes that vehicle can finally take flight “not too late” into 2024.

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A pension fund has filed suit against the board of directors of Amazon, claiming they “acted in bad faith” in approving launch contracts for the Project Kuiper broadband constellation that awarded billions of dollars to Blue Origin, the company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

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One chapter in European access to space came to a close July 5 with the final launch of the Ariane 5, but the beginning of the next chapter faces additional delays.

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Spanish launch vehicle startup PLD Space has postponed a suborbital test flight to September after weather and a technical glitch scrubbed earlier launch attempts.

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Arianespace has postponed the final launch of the Ariane 5, potentially for several weeks, after discovering a potential problem with pyrotechnical systems on the rocket.

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ClearSpace has signed a contract with Arianespace to launch its first debris de-orbit mission on Europe’s Vega C rocket in the second half 2026, the Swiss startup announced May 9.

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An Italian Earth observation project funded by pandemic relief euros has ordered at least 34 satellites and a pair of Vega launches in recent months.

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Mobile satcom services provider Ovzon said March 28 it has secured a deadline extension enabling it to keep priority spectrum rights for its first broadband satellite, as long as it launches early enough in a July-September window SpaceX has set for the mission.

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Even as the space industry complains of a shortage of launch capacity, SpaceX said it has room to increase an already surging pace of launches.

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In a vote of confidence for a troubled launch vehicle, Arianespace won a contract from the Italian government for up to three Vega C launches of an Earth observation constellation.

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