Europe bids farewell to the Ariane-5, its reliable heavy-lift rocket, as it successfully completes its final mission.

For almost thirty years, this remarkable vehicle has been instrumental in Europe's space exploration endeavors and has now concluded its career by successfully deploying two telecommunications satellites. Throughout its history, the Ariane-5 has demonstrated exceptional performance, encountering only two failures out of 117 launches.

However, with the retirement of the Ariane-5, Europe now faces the challenge of not having a ready replacement, leaving the continent in a challenging position.

Europe faces a significant challenge as the development and testing phase of the next-generation rocket, the Ariane-6, continues, potentially delaying its debut until the following year. Additionally, Europe's reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets is no longer possible, and the smaller Vega-C rocket remains grounded due to a failure during a previous flight in December.

Consequently, European satellites have resorted to utilizing American services. Just last Saturday, the Euclid space telescope, valued at €1.4 billion (£1.2 billion), was successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket from Florida.

The unavailability of domestic rockets has led to European Space Agency director general Josef Aschbacher acknowledging the "acute launcher crisis" Europe finds itself in.

The final mission, conducted from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on Wednesday, involved two payloads: the French defense satellite Syracuse 4B and the German demonstration spacecraft Heinrich Hertz. The Ariane rocket took off promptly at the beginning of its designated launch window, commencing at 19:00 local time.

According to Dr. Aschbacher, the Ariane-5 will be remembered as an extraordinary spacecraft. He expressed his confidence that the upcoming Ariane-6, once it is ready for launch, will demonstrate the same level of performance and precision. Dr. Aschbacher shared these thoughts with BBC News, emphasizing the unique achievements in terms of accuracy that the Ariane-5 has accomplished. One remarkable instance was on December 25, 2021, when the rocket successfully deployed the James Webb Space Telescope, worth $10 billion (£8 billion). The Ariane-5's injection into orbit was executed with such precision that the observatory did not need to utilize its own fuel for trajectory corrections, effectively extending its operational lifespan from the initially projected 10 years to an impressive 20 years.

The development of a new European heavy-lift rocket, the Ariane-6, was initiated due to the unsustainable production costs of the Ariane-5, considering the competition posed by the United States.

Elon Musk's SpaceX company has revolutionized the launch market with its reusable Falcon rockets, disrupting the price point traditionally set by the Ariane rockets. While the Ariane-6 is designed to be at least 40% more cost-effective than its predecessor, the Ariane-5, it still follows the "expendable" model, requiring a new rocket for each mission.

Europe is gradually transitioning towards reusable technologies, but these advancements are not expected to be operational until the 2030s. Meanwhile, Elon Musk continues to introduce even larger rockets that promise further reductions in launch costs.

The final flight of the Ariane-5 on Wednesday proceeded flawlessly, successfully deploying the Heinrich Hertz and Syracuse 4B payloads into a geostationary orbit approximately half an hour after liftoff. Over its illustrious career, the Ariane-5 has launched over 230 satellites into orbit, amounting to nearly 1,000 tonnes of hardware.

Notable missions include the deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope, the Rosetta comet-chaser in 2004, the Envisat environmental observer in 2002, the ATV space station freighter weighing 20 tonnes in 2008, and the recent launch of Europe's Jupiter moons explorer, Juice, in 2023.

Originally conceived in the 1980s as a means to launch the astronaut shuttle Hermes, the plan was abandoned due to cost concerns, and the Ariane-5 was repurposed in 1996 solely for satellite launches. Throughout its operational lifespan, it has been responsible for launching approximately half of all major telecommunications satellites.