Ariane 5, a rocket that has flown 117 missions in a quarter of a century, is retiring after putting two more telecommunications satellites into orbit. Europe is experiencing a crisis in terms of missiles, in the future, because the Ariane 6 is not ready and the flights of the Vega-C rocket are suspended for a while.

Ariane 5 was launched late Wednesday from a spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying two telecommunications satellites into their planned orbits: a French military one called Syracuse 4B and a German experimental one called Heinrich Hertz.

This last mission was supposed to be on June 16, but a technical problem occurred. The launch, scheduled for July 4, was postponed due to weather conditions (adverse high-altitude winds).

The July 5 launch went off without a hitch.

Europe does not yet have a replacement for Ariane 5, as Ariane 6 is not yet ready and will fly in 2024. The Euclid Space Telescope, launched on July 1, was launched from Florida on a SpaceX rocket.

When the Ariane 5 made its first flights, the moment when a certain Elon Musk was going to launch reusable rockets that could reduce the cost of a launch below 100 million dollars was still far away.

Ariane 5 was a model of precision and reliability with a supplier network set up like a Swiss watch. In 27 years, there were only two failures, and the number of successes exceeded 100.

Several launches will go down in history, and the ultimate proof of Ariane 5’s reliability is the fact that NASA entrusted it with the launch of the James Webb Telescope, which was sent into space on Christmas Day 2021. The project worth 10 billion US dollars is entrusted to the Europeans.