Possible New Expendable Launchers for Europe in the future
- Paper number
IAC-07-D2.4.04
- Author
Mr. Christophe Talbot, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Jean-Marc Astorg, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Joseph Berenbach, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Eric Louaas, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Michel Illig, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Coauthor
Mr. Christophe Bonnal, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France
- Year
2007
- Abstract
With Ariane 5, already in operation in French Guiana, and the arrival of Vega and Soyuz in a close future, Europe will have for the first time a large family of launchers, optimised for the commercial market and capable to fit with almost all the European institutional needs.
For the next decade, adaptations and improvements of those launchers remain the priority to guarantee the access to space in the best conditions. One of the first challenges is to give to Ariane 5 an additional increase of performance and a versatile capability to follow the evolution of the geostationary satellite platforms, by replacing the upper stage by a re-ignitable one.
Beyond, several options can be considered, depending on the emergence of new missions, new competitors, or the maturation of new technologies:
- Ariane offers various other possibilities of improvements, ranging from the replacement of the boosters by new ones derived from the P80 demonstrator (and first stage of Vega), to a new engine cycle for the Vulcain, or the adaptation of the launcher to human flight.
- If a new heavy or medium launcher is required due to the evolution of the market (necessity to pass to a single payload capability or enhancement of the extensibility to be compatible to a larger range of missions), several solutions are currently under study taking benefit of existing (or to be) building blocks and demonstrators.
- If an extension of the current family becomes necessary, several studies have been performed either for very small launchers (mini to micro LV), including air launch vehicles, missiles derivatives and building blocks launchers, or for very heavy ones, more adapted to space exploration and based on Ariane 5 stages.
The present paper will propose a synthetic overview of different ELV concepts recently studied by CNES with French Space Industry, ranging from very small to very heavy launchers, and the links with current technology demonstrators.
- Abstract document