Arianespace carried out six Ariane 5 launches, along with three by Soyuz and three by Vega – a three-fold increase for the latter over the previous year
Arianespace set a new record in 2015 for its family of launchers operating from the Guiana Space Center (CSG) in French Guiana, with 12 successful launches in 12 months.
Arianespace carried out six Ariane 5 launches, along with three by Soyuz and three by Vega a three-fold increase for the latter over the previous year.
Based on this operational track record, Arianespace should boost sales to more than $1.5 billion in 2015, the highest total in its history.
Arianespace won contracts for 33 new launches in 2015:
- 8 Ariane 5 launches for 14 geostationary satellites (GEO), including two government satellites (Eumetsat), with more than half of these contracts open to competition, and one special contract for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on behalf of ESA, within the scope of collaboration with NASA,
- 21 Soyuz launches for the OneWeb constellation and another launch for four additional satellites in the O3b constellation,
- 3 Vega launches, including one shared launch carrying the PeruSat-1 satellite and Skysat satellites for Google/Skybox Imaging.
Arianespace also booked orders in 2015 worth $2.7 billion, including 35% for geostationary satellites to be launched by Ariane 5 and 65% for non-geostationary satellites to be launched by the three launchers in the family.
Arianespace is announcing two new launch service contracts to start the year: one with Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence & Space for two COMSAT NG satellites on behalf of the French defense procurement agency DGA, to be launched by Ariane 5; and the other with French space agency CNES for CERES satellites, to be launched by Vega for CNES and DGA.
