ARIANE 5 ECA Fully Operational
- Paper number
IAC-07-D2.1.01
- Author
Mr. Louis Laurent, Arianespace, France
- Coauthor
Denis SCHMITT, Arianespace, France
- Coauthor
Mr. Laurent Jourdainne, Arianespace, France
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Following a record 2006 year with 5 successful Ariane 5 ECA launches, Ariane 5 ECA is now established as Arianespace workhorse for heavy payloads both for commercial and governmental customers. The paper will focus of the recent flight results and production activities.
1. Flights results
In a first step the paper will describe the recent Ariane 5 flight results and will draw the main lessons learnt following the first 2 years of Ariane 5 ECA operation.
2. Consolidation of the production activities
In a second step the paper will describe how the Ariane 5 ECA product has been industrialized through:
- Hardware modifications limited to robustness improvement, obsolescence treatment or production anomalies,
- An increase of the capacity and efficiency of the manufacturing facilities,
- The flight domain enlargement and the robustness demonstration thanks to extended analysis of flight data,
- An increased availability of the launch system through a consolidation of the revalidation of ground systems.
3. Arianespace next steps
In parallel with Ariane 5 ECA, other challenges for Arianespace for the next years are the preparation and the start of the exploitation of Soyuz and Vega from the Guiana Space Center. The paper will describe the status of these preparation activities from Arianespace point of view.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-07-D2.1.01.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.