New European Ariane 6 rocket successfully lifts off with Portuguese nanosatellite on board

Europe’s new Ariane 6 rocket successfully lifted off from French Guiana at 8pm (Lisbon time) on Tuesday, carrying the Portuguese ISTSat-1 nanosatellite.

This is the first flight of a rocket that will allow Europe to regain autonomous access to space.

The launch, from Europe’s space base in Kourou, French Guiana, was broadcast live on the channel of the European Space Agency (ESA), which is responsible for certifying the flights of new vehicles.

“We are making history now!” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher concluded.

The rocket’s upper module, which carried small satellites into orbit including ISTSat-1, separated at 8:08 p.m. to applause in mission control.

A few minutes later, at 20:14, the Santa Maria teleport in the Azores, operated by Thales Edisoft Portugal, became the first station to provide data on the rocket’s performance and trajectory.

ISTSat-1, built by students and professors of the Institute of Technology (IST), was “launched” into space at 9:06 p.m. and will be positioned 580 kilometers from Earth, above the International Space Station, the “home” and laboratory of the astronauts.

It will send the first data approximately one month after it starts working.

The device, a “cube” costing around 270,000 euros, will be used to test a new decoder of messages sent by planes, which will allow them to be detected in remote areas and to assess the feasibility of using nanosatellites to receive signals about the status of planes, such as speed and altitude, for flight safety purposes.

It is the first nanosatellite developed by a Portuguese university institution and the third Portuguese satellite sent into space, following the Eros MH-1 nanosatellite in March and the PoSat-1 microsatellite in 1993, in which companies participated.

ISTSat-1 will remain in orbit for five to 15 years before reentering the atmosphere, but its mission will be of shorter duration.

Along with ISTSat-1, other satellites and scientific equipment from foreign institutes, companies and space agencies followed in the upper module of Ariana-6.

It is with the Ariane 6 rocket line that ESA intends to send the Plato space probe in 2026, which will “photograph” thousands of stars and search for planets similar to Earth. The Portuguese scientific team of the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences is participating in the mission.

Ariane 6, which made its maiden flight four years later and cost €4.5 billion, will replace Ariane 5, which made its final flight in July 2023.

Like its predecessor, the Ariane 6 was built by the French company Ariane, which will operate commercial flights.

ESA, of which Portugal has been a member since 2000, plans a second launch, this time commercial, of a new type of European rocket by the end of the year. Fourteen flights are planned over the next two years.