Could the finalized split of Avio and Arianespace offer an opening for competitors?

The European Space Agency’s member states have agreed on the details of how customers already booked to be launched on Vega C flights will be managed following the spin-off of Avio from Arianespace.

On 6 November 2023, at the ESA Council in Seville, the agency’s Member States adopted a resolution that would allow Italian rocket manufacturer Avio to market and manage the launch of Vega C missions independently of Arianespace. To complete the separation of Avio and Arianespace, the two parties entered into negotiations to determine how the dozen Vega C flights currently under contract with Arianespace would be managed.

At a press conference following the 327th ESA Council meeting in late June, Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the two companies had reached an impasse and that one of them had asked the agency to mediate the negotiations. This process bore fruit, with ESA announcing on 5 July that an agreement had been reached and that a resolution detailing the details of the agreement had been adopted by the agency’s member states.

Under the terms of the resolution, Arianespace will remain the launch service provider for the final Vega flight scheduled for later this year, and for all Vega C flights up to and including VV29, which is expected to take place in the fourth quarter of 2025. Thereafter, all customers who have contracted for Vega C flights with Arianespace will be offered the opportunity to transfer their contracts to Avio as the new launch service provider for their missions. This appears, at least in theory, to offer customers for VV30 and beyond a chance to reassess their choice of Vega C for the launch of their respective payloads.

Asked whether the deal would allow customers to shop around instead of transferring their contracts to Avio, Lucia Linares, ESA’s head of strategy and institutional launches, gave a diplomatic, non-exhaustive answer.

“Arianespace will ask for approval to transfer these launch services contracts to customers, which are European institutional customers,” Linares told European Spaceflight. “ESA will respond positively for its own missions.”

While in the past, European institutions could choose to launch their missions on European launchers, EUMETSAT’s recent decision to abandon Ariane 6 in favour of a SpaceX Falcon 9 has challenged this tradition. With Vega C currently grounded after a launch failure in late 2022 and a failed recertification test in June 2023, it would not be surprising if customers felt empowered to consider alternatives.