Arianespace has been the world's leading satellite launch company for more than 30 years, accounting for over half of all commercial satellite launches.

At World Satellite Business Week, organized by Euroconsult in Paris from September 9 to 13, Arianespace reaffirms its position as No. 1 worldwide.

Record order book

Building on its family of three launch vehicles (Ariane 5, Soyuz, Vega) and their proven reliability and availability, Arianespace has a record backlog of orders from 26 different customers: 34 satellites to be launched by Ariane 5 into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), plus three dedicated Ariane 5 launches; 10 dedicated Soyuz launches, and four Vega launches. These launches are worth more than 4 billion euros and are equal to over three years of business for Arianespace. Arianespace is announcing five new launch contracts at Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week:

• 2 with DirectTV (SkyBrasil-1 and DTH)
• 1 with Star One (Star One D1)
• 1 with SkyPerfect JSAT
• 1 with Intelsat (Intelsat 34)

In addition to these five contracts, Arianespace was recently selected by Visiona Tecnología Espacial to launch Brazil’s Geostationary Defense and Strategic Communications Satellite (SGDC). Since the beginning of the year, Arianespace has signed a total of 13 launch contracts, equal to 62% of the market, worth over 1 billion euros.

Adapting to customer requirements

With Soyuz and Vega now joining Ariane 5 at the Guiana Space Center (CSG) in French Guiana, Arianespace operates a complete family of launch vehicles, capable of launching all types of satellites for all customers into all orbits. Based on this position, Arianespace has therefore teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA), French space agency CNES and industry to deploy improvement measures for the joint scheduling of these three launch systems.

The primary objective is to enhance the Guiana Space Center’s launch flexibility and capacity in order to meet growing customer demand. Furthermore, to keep pace with the increasing size of geostationary telecommunications satellites, Arianespace proposed increasing the available payload volume on the Ariane 5 ECA by 2015, stretching the fairing by up to 2 meters without penalizing performance. This proposal was warmly welcomed by both government agencies and industry.

Astrium and Ruag have started preliminary work within the scope of an ESA program. France has confirmed its share of the funding, worth 25 million euros, via the government’s Investment Program for the Future. Arianespace is currently in discussions with industrial prime contractors to negotiate the procurement contracts for the Ariane 5, Soyuz and Vega launchers to be used on missions starting in 2016 and 2017. 

An exceptional track record, combining operational reliability and availability

Arianespace has already performed six launches from the Guiana Space Center in 2013: one Vega launch, one Soyuz launch and four Ariane 5 launches, with the latter now having carried out 57 successful launches in a row over the last decade. The last 12 launches in a row all took place at the opening of the launch window, reflecting the unrivaled availability and quality of this launch system. Arianespace and subsidiary Starsem also launched six new satellites in the Globalstar 2 constellation from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan earlier this year.

On May 6, 2013, the new Vega launcher successfully performed its second mission, carrying the Proba-V, VNREDSat-1 and ESTCube-1 spacecraft. On June 25, 2013, a Soyuz rocket orbited the first four satellites in the O3b constellation from the Guiana Space Center. Three Ariane 5 ECA rockets orbited six telecommunications satellites in dual launches on February 7, July 25 and August 29, while an Ariane 5 ES injected the Albert Einstein ATV (Automated Transfer Vehicle) into low Earth orbit (LEO) on June 5, to bring supplies to the International Space Station. This mission orbited over 20 metric tons, the largest payload ever carried by Ariane 5. Among the upcoming launches in 2013, our customer O3b has decided to carry out additional tests on its satellites, which means that the second launch for the O3b constellation has been postponed for the moment. Arianespace’s manifest for the remainder of the year is therefore as follows:

• a Soyuz launches from CSG on November 20, lofting ESA’s Gaia astronomical observatory and star mapping satellite.
• an Ariane 5 launch in mid-December, with the SES Astra 5B and Hispasat Amazonas-4A satellites.