NASA, en Garde!

Europe's Ariane vs. the shuttle

Just offshore lies Devil's Island, once the world's most dreaded penal colony. A short distance away, piranha-infested rivers course through the rain forest. Yet out of this equatorial backwater on the steamy coast of French Guiana last week roared a gleaming, cream-colored three-stage rocket emblazoned with the flags of eleven European nations. The fiery liftoff, heard for miles around, was a noisy, jubilant awakening for an independent space effort in faraway Europe.

As the 155-ft.-long Ariane rocket rose into high earth orbit, it evoked multilingual cheers from technicians at France's Guiana Space Center and from European space officials watching a huge TV monitor outside Paris ("Tres jolie!" "Excellent trajectory!"). The rocket carried a European weather observatory called Meteosat 2, an Indian communications satellite and a packet of heat-measuring devices. The flawless launch marked the first time the European Space Agency (ESA) had sent major payloads into orbit with its own booster.

Built by a French-dominated consortium of European companies, Ariane is a liquid-fuel rocket reminiscent of the U.S. Atlas/Centaur launch vehicle. In its first test, in 1979, the rocket reached orbit, but the second Ariane burned up shortly after liftoff, in 1980, because of engine failure. Thus Ariane's latest launch attempt --the next-to-last trial before the rocket is scheduled to go into regular commercial service--was regarded as something of a make-or-break proposition, like Columbia's flight last April.

Unlike the U.S. shuttle, each rocket can be used only once. But Ariane has one distinct advantage. Aided by the boost it gets from launch near the equator (where the earth's surface velocity is greater than at higher latitudes either north or south), it can carry payloads to an ideal parking place, 22,300 miles above the equator, in what is called geosynchronous orbit. At that distance, satellites remain fixed over one spot on the ground, permanently in line of sight of antennas. The U.S. shuttle can reach a maximum altitude of only 690 miles, and additional boosters will be needed to loft payloads higher. Europeans were quick to make much of la difference. NASA, en garde!

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