Europe Rejoins Space Race but New Rocket’s Flight Ends in Anomaly

Ariane 6 reached orbit on Tuesday. But a problem made the European Space Agency rocket deviate from its flight plan late in the mission.

At long last, Europe’s eagerly awaited rocket headed to space.

At 3 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday — one decade after the European Space Agency set in motion a plan for a powerful new vehicle that would carry the continent’s ambitions to orbit — Ariane 6 soared away from the launchpad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The vehicle reached orbit 18 minutes and 44 seconds after liftoff, and about an hour later, it deployed a series of small satellites, after which the mission was deemed a success by its managers.

But an anomaly in the final phase of the flight caused Ariane 6 to deviate from its planned trajectory, making it unable to achieve the altitude required to release the last of its cargo. Officials at ArianeGroup, the French aerospace company that built the rocket, said it could take up to two weeks to analyze the data and determine what went wrong.

But Stéphane Israël, the chief executive of Arianespace, the company that operates the rocket, said the anomaly, “has no consequence on the next launches.”

“We are perfectly on track to make a second launch this year,” he said at a post-launch news conference.

The rocket’s debut, after years of delays, was earlier met with applause, whoops and cheers by ESA staff watching the liftoff and excited to see European nations regaining in-house access to the final frontier, at least in some measure.