Ariane 6: First upper stage ready for hot-fire testing

The first complete upper stage of the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle has just left the ArianeGroup plant in Bremen, Germany. The stage is now complete, with its two liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks connected to the new re-ignitable Vinci engine and equipped with all lines, valves, and electronic and hydraulic instrumentation and control systems. It is now fully operational, following final assembly in October 2020 and successfully undergoing all functional testing (hydraulic, electrical, and avionics) at the ArianeGroup site in Bremen. This stage, called the Hot Firing Model (HFM), will now be transported from Bremen to Lampoldshausen in Baden-Württemberg, for hot-fire testing at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) facility.

The stage will be loaded onto a barge at Bremen’s Neustadt port and travel down the Weser river to the North Sea, then up the Rhine and Neckar rivers to Bad Wimpfen in Baden-Württemberg. From there, it will be taken by road to Lampoldshausen. It will then be installed on the specially constructed test bench inaugurated in 2019. Once the stage is in place under the gantry on the test site, the campaign will consist of firing up the stage up to four times.

Of the 550 highly qualified employees currently working at the ArianeGroup site in Bremen, about 100 are producing components for Ariane 6, in a building equipped with the very latest industry 4.0 manufacturing process and integration technologies. This ensures optimized production in terms of cost, efficiency, and respect for the environment. In addition to the HFM delivered today, two further upper stages are being integrated: one for combined launcher/launch pad tests in Kourou, the Combined Test Model (CTM), and the other for the Ariane 6 maiden flight, the Flight Model 1 (FM1). The launch pad facilities are currently being built by CNES (the French Space Agency), while in ArianeGroup’s Les Mureaux plant (France) the core stage, itself also intended for combined tests (another part of the CTM) is also being integrated, along with the maiden flight core stage (FM1).

Ariane 6 is a program managed and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA). As industrial prime contractor and design authority for the launcher, ArianeGroup is responsible for its development and production with its industrial partners, as well as for operation through its subsidiary Arianespace. The French space agency CNES is responsible for the construction of the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana.