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Recap of the past year and a look ahead to the major milestones expected in 2025.

Another major milestone has been reached in the preparation schedule for the first Ariane 6 commercial flight: the transfer of the main core and boosters to the launch pad.

The components for the second Ariane 6 flight model have arrived in Kourou. Take a behind-the-scenes look at the preparation campaign in the run-up to lift-off, scheduled for mid-February 2025.

The workhorse of Europe's space industry, Ariane 6 is a powerful, highly versatile and scalable launcher, capable of carrying out a wide range of missions in all types of orbit.

ArianeGroup and Arianespace have announced that the first commercial flight of the European heavy-lift launch vehicle will take place in the first quarter of 2025.

With the maiden launch of Ariane 6 on 9 July 2024 at 4 pm, European space transportation entered a new era, and Europe regained its autonomy of access to space.

Following the new status report published by the French space agency and ESA a week after the successful combined tests on 23 November, the maiden flight of the Ariane 6 launcher is scheduled to take place between mid-June and the end of July 2024.

After docking for the first time last January, the cargo ship Canopée dropped anchor again at Kourou on Friday, 3 November.

On 23 November 2023, teams from CNES, ArianeGroup and ESA successfully completed the long-duration hot-fire test of Ariane 6’s main stage on its launch pad at Europe’s spaceport.

As part of the combined testing campaign, Ariane 6's mobile gantry was retracted on 22 June.