Ariane 6 fully stacked

Seen here for the first time is a fully assembled test model of ESA’s new heavy-lift rocket, Ariane 6, standing on its launch pad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Topping the core stage and four boosters is the upper composite – consisting of two half-fairings and a payload mock-up with the structural adapter needed to join it to the core stage – which made the 10 km trip from the encapsulation building to launch pad on 12 October 2022.

Assembly, transfer and installation of an upper composite validated the Ariane 6 assembly process, opening the way for teams from ESA, ArianeGroup and French space agency CNES to make the mechanical, electrical and fluid connections which join this test model of the Ariane 64 configuration to the launch pad. Then come so-called combined tests, to validate the complete system: rocket, launch pad and shared connections.