Arianespace has announced that the next Ariane 6 launch will take place no earlier than 23 November, marking the rocket’s return to flight after ground testing reportedly revealed an issue with one of its turbopumps.
The flight will carry 36 Amazon Leo satellites aboard an Ariane 64, the rocket’s four-booster configuration. It will be the fifth Ariane 6 flight of 2026 and the tenth since the rocket’s inaugural flight in July 2024.
Arianespace’s 14 October announcement follows a report from French newspaper La Tribune, published a day earlier, claiming ArianeGroup had resolved an anomaly affecting a liquid hydrogen turbopump that had disrupted the rocket’s launch schedule. According to the report, the anomaly was first detected during an engine acceptance test shortly before the start of summer.
Asked by European Spaceflight to comment on the La Tribune report, an ArianeGroup spokesperson declined to address it directly and instead pointed to the newly announced launch date.
“The next launch has been announced today, so the situation is on track.”
The mission had previously been targeted for launch no earlier than 7 October, according to a provisional schedule published by the French space agency CNES. As a result, the turbopump issue appears to have delayed the launch by almost seven weeks.
In September, ArianeGroup and Arianespace did not explicitly confirm the turbopump issue but said the rocket’s remaining 2026 mission schedule would need to be adjusted while additional checks were carried out on the Ariane 6 production line.
Arianespace had been expected to conduct seven or eight Ariane 6 launches in 2026. With Ariane 6’s return to flight now scheduled for late November, Arianespace is unlikely to conduct more than one additional flight this year, bringing the expected total to six. The final Ariane 6 flight of 2026 is expected to carry the MetOp-SG-B1 weather satellite for EUMETSAT.
Arianespace is planning to ramp up its launch cadence next year, with a company spokesperson confirming that it is still targeting nine to ten Ariane 6 launches in 2027.
