The most powerful rocket in Europe is preparing for its first launch.

Europe is preparing to launch the most powerful rocket in its history — Ariane 64. The launch will take place from the spaceport in French Guiana and will mark the first launch of the Ariane 6 rocket in the configuration with four side boosters, as well as the first commercial flight of the rocket with customer payload.

As part of mission VA267, the rocket will deploy 32 satellites of Amazon's low-orbit constellation, Amazon Leo, into low Earth orbit — part of the Amazon project, which is considered a competitor to the Starlink satellite network. Amazon has already launched more than 150 satellites into orbit and plans to deploy over 3,200 spacecraft.

The use of four boosters makes Ariane 64 almost twice as powerful as the version with two boosters. The rocket can deliver more than 20 tons of payload to orbit and generates about 3.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. For comparison, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy provides about 5.1 million pounds of thrust.

According to launch operator Arianespace, the mission will last 1 hour and 54 minutes — during this time, the rocket will almost completely circle the Earth, after which the upper stage will gradually deploy the satellites into orbit. For Amazon, this is the first launch of a satellite constellation performed by a European carrier rocket.

The development of Ariane 6 involved 13 countries — members of the European Space Agency — and more than 600 contractors. The rocket was designed to reduce operational costs compared to Ariane 5, but remains fully expendable, unlike SpaceX's partially reusable rockets.

Ariane 6 stands about 62 meters tall — comparable to a 20-story building. At liftoff, the rocket burns more than 140 tons of solid fuel during the first two minutes of flight.

Source: interestingengineering.com