Enlarge / The final Vega rocket climbs away from its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. (credit: ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–S. Martin)

The final flight of Europe's Vega rocket lifted off Wednesday night from French Guiana, carrying an important environmental monitoring satellite for the European Union's flagship Copernicus program.

The 98-foot-tall (30-meter) Vega rocket took off at 9:50 pm EDT Wednesday (01:50 UTC Thursday) from the European-run spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The launcher headed north from the launch pad on the coast of South America, aiming for a polar orbit about 480 miles (775 kilometers) above the Earth.

The sole payload was Sentinel-2C, a remote sensing platform set to join Europe's fleet of Copernicus environmental satellites. The multibillion-dollar Copernicus system is the world's most comprehensive space-based Earth observation network, with satellites fitted with different kinds of instruments monitoring land surfaces, oceans, and the atmosphere.

Welcome to Edition 7.05 of the Rocket Report! The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for 15 days after a rare failure of its upper stage earlier this month. The FAA gave the green light for Falcon 9 to return to flight July 25, and within a couple of days, SpaceX successfully launched three missions from three launch pads. There's a lot on Falcon 9's to-do list, so we expect SpaceX to quickly return to form with several flights per week.

As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Big delay for a reusable rocket testbed. The French space agency, CNES, has revealed that the inaugural test flight of its Callisto reusable rocket demonstrator will not take place until late 2025 or early 2026, European Spaceflight reports. CNES unveiled an updated website for the Callisto rocket program earlier this month, showing the test rocket has been delayed from a debut launch later this year to until late 2025 or early 2026. The Callisto rocket is designed to test techniques and technologies required for reusable rockets, such as vertical takeoff and vertical landing, with suborbital flights from the Guiana Space Center in South America.

Enlarge / This artist's concept shows the possible appearance of ESA's RAMSES spacecraft, which will release two small CubeSats for additional observations at Apophis. (credit: ESA-Science Office)

For nearly 20 years, scientists have known an asteroid named Apophis will pass unusually close to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. But most officials at the world's space agencies stopped paying much attention when updated measurements ruled out the chance Apophis will impact Earth any time soon.

Now, Apophis is again on the agenda, but this time as a science opportunity, not as a threat. The problem is, there's not much time to design, build, and launch a spacecraft to get into position near Apophis in less than five years. The good news is there are designs, and in some cases, existing spacecraft, that governments can repurpose for missions to Apophis, a rocky asteroid about the size of three football fields.

Scientists discovered Apophis in 2004, and the first measurements of its orbit indicated there was a small chance it could strike Earth in 2029 or in 2036. Using more detailed radar observations of Apophis, scientists in 2021 ruled out any danger to Earth for at least the next 100 years.

Enlarge / Europe's first Ariane 6 rocket lifts off from a new launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. (credit: Jody Amiet/AFP via Getty Images)

The first European Ariane 6 rocket fired off its launch pad at the edge of the Amazon rainforest and climbed into orbit Tuesday, an inaugural flight a decade in the making that restored Europe's ability to put its own large satellites into space.

The debut of the Ariane 6 rocket came almost exactly one year after Europe's previous workhorse rocket, the Ariane 5, flew for the final time. Running four years late, the Ariane 6 is set to become Europe's next flagship launcher. But delays in its development, combined with other factors, forced European governments to pay SpaceX to deliver several payloads to orbit.

With Tuesday's test flight, European space officials hope those days are behind them. The European Space Agency paid more than $4 billion to get the Ariane 6 rocket to this point, with the goal of replacing the Ariane 5 with a cheaper, more capable launcher. There are still pressing questions about Ariane 6's cost per launch, and whether the rocket will ever be able to meet its price target and compete with SpaceX and other companies in the commercial market.

Enlarge / The first Ariane 6 rocket is pictured inside the mobile gantry on its launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana. The gantry will wheel away from the rocket during the countdown Tuesday. (credit: ESA-S. Corvaja)

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket is finally ready to fly, four years late but vital as ever for European governments backing the more than $4 billion project.

Set for liftoff from French Guiana, the new rocket will be Europe's flagship launcher for the next decade, providing rides to space for European science probes, navigation satellites, and military payloads. Ariane 6 also has a toehold in the commercial market, with a contract for 18 launches to deliver satellites to orbit for Amazon's Project Kuiper broadband network.

The first Ariane 6 rocket has a four-hour launch window opening at 2 pm EDT (18:00 UTC) Tuesday to depart the European-run Guiana Space Center in South America.

Enlarge / SpaceX's 10th Falcon Heavy rocket climbs into orbit with a new US government weather satellite. (credit: SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 6.50 of the Rocket Report! SpaceX launched its 10th Falcon Heavy rocket this week with the GOES-U weather satellite for NOAA, and this one was a beauty. The late afternoon timing of the launch and atmospheric conditions made for great photography. Falcon Heavy has become a trusted rocket for the US government, and its next flight in October will deploy NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on the way to explore one of Jupiter's enigmatic icy moons.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Sir Peter Beck dishes on launch business. Ars spoke with the recently knighted Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, on where his scrappy company fits in a global launch marketplace dominated by SpaceX. Rocket Lab racked up the third-most number of orbital launches by any US launch company (it's headquartered in California but primarily assembles and launches rockets in New Zealand). SpaceX's rideshare launch business with the Falcon 9 rocket is putting immense pressure on small launch companies like Rocket Lab. However, Beck argues his Electron rocket is a bespoke solution for customers desiring to put their satellite in a specific place at a specific time, a luxury they can't count on with a SpaceX rideshare.

Enlarge / A sea-borne variant of the commercial Ceres 1 rocket lifts off near the coast of Rizhao, a city of 3 million in China's Shandong province. (credit: VCG via Getty Images)

Welcome to Edition 6.46 of the Rocket Report! It looks like we will be covering the crew test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and the fourth test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket over the next week. All of this is happening as SpaceX keeps up its cadence of flying multiple Starlink missions per week. The real stars are the Ars copy editors helping make sure our stories don't use the wrong names.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Another North Korean launch failure. North Korea's latest attempt to launch a rocket with a military reconnaissance satellite ended in failure due to the midair explosion of the rocket during the first-stage flight this week, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports. Video captured by the Japanese news organization NHK appears to show the North Korean rocket disappearing in a fireball shortly after liftoff Monday night from a launch pad on the country's northwest coast. North Korean officials acknowledged the launch failure and said the rocket was carrying a small reconnaissance satellite named Malligyong-1-1.