When Ariane 6 suffered a glitch on its first flight, the mishap felt strangely inevitable. Nearly half of all rockets fail on their first launches. After a troubled development and four years of delays, Ariane 6 looked like a prime candidate to join the list. The launcher was commissioned to create a European pathway into the cosmos. Since the retirement of Ariane 5 last July, the continent has had no independent access to space. Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for the internal market, described the problem as an “unprecedented crisis.” A failure to launch on Tuesday would have deepened the woes.…
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