Arianespace will retain its industry leadership in 2008, relying on a three-pronged strategy of meeting the company’s on-time mission commitments to customers, utilizing Ariane 5 launchers that are built to a standardized configuration, and maintaining a clearly defined commercial/industrial organization for its Service & Solutions offer.
Speaking to journalists at its traditional New Year’s press conference today in Paris, Chairman & CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall said the launch marketplace continues to recognize Arianespace’s quality and performance, expanding the order book to record levels which is being met by a continued ramp-up in mission rate.
“Our record year in 2007 clearly shows that quality is recognized within the launch services marketplace,” Le Gall told international reporters. “With Ariane 5’s accelerating launch rate, and the future introduction of Soyuz and Vega to our family of vehicles, I can reassure the satellite industry that Arianespace will have no shortage of launch capacity for our customers when they sign contracts with us.”
The six Ariane 5 missions and three Soyuz flights conducted last year lofted a total of 21 payloads, placing more than 50 metric tons into orbit. During the same period, Arianespace signed 13 new Service & Solutions contracts for missions to geostationary transfer orbit, and four additional orders for launches of satellites into low Earth orbit.
Arianespace is targeting seven to eight Ariane 5 missions in 2008, with payloads that include the first Automated Transfer Vehicle re-supply spacecraft for the International Space Station, the Herschel and Planck space science spacecraft, and TerreStar I the largest commercial geostationary communications satellite ever built.
Le Gall stressed the importance of Arianespace’s organizational structure in today’s competitive marketplace, which guarantees customers a single point of contact from the moment a contract is signed until the payload is in orbit. Arianespace takes full commercial responsibility, overseeing the Ariane industrial network that is tasked with delivering mission-ready launchers to the company.
“We see customers insisting more and more on this point, the value of which was evident once again in 2007 when some of our competitors encountered problems,” he added. “As one U.S. client told us, at Arianespace, ‘launches speak louder than words,’ while other players in the industry ‘take the money and run.”
The production of Ariane 5 vehicles in a standardized configuration is another key to Arianespace’s success, ensuring repeatability in the production cycle for a high level of quality.
“Our commercial offer is based on the heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA configuration, which is built the same way, each and every time, without change,” Le Gall added.
As a result of these factors, Arianespace continues to respect its customers’ mission timing requirements, a fact demonstrated by the six Ariane 5 launches performed last year.”It’s important to note that in 2007, we orbited no less than three satellites originally planned for competitors’ launchers, but which simply were not available when they had been promised,” he said.
Looking to the future, Arianespace is on track to ramp Ariane 5’s launch rate to eight missions annually by 2008, while the medium-lift Soyuz and lightweight Vega are being readied for their commercial service introductions in 2009.
Le Gall said Arianespace has 20 more Ariane 5s remaining from the PA production batch ordered three years ago, providing launcher continuity through 2010. The next batch will cover 35 more Ariane 5s, with a full production agreement for these vehicles being inked in the first half of 2008 (as a follow- on to the agreement for long-lead production items signed last summer). “This new production batch will produce Ariane 5s through 2015, so Arianespace clearly will have the launch capacity it needs.”
For Soyuz, Arianespace has ordered six launchers for operation from the Spaceport in French Guiana, with negotiations underway for 10-15 more. These additional vehicles will serve in particular to orbit spacecraft for Europe’s Galileo satellite-based navigation system.
Vega is continuing its development, and a first production order is being planned for these launchers, Le Gall said.
