What is your name and role?

Guillaume Galateau, I am an ESA Launcher System Engineer, responsible for ESA’s assessment of the first Ariane 6 launcher (built by prime contractor ArianeGroup) and mission flightworthiness, enabling ESA, as launch operator, to authorise the launch at liftoff.

My job is an ongoing task to challenge the justification for launcher flightworthiness including launcher items, stage structures, pyrotechnical separation systems, propulsion systems, avionics and software systems. Throughout a launch campaign, this includes launcher integration, preparation, checks and assessing technical files based on mission risk assessment. Most of the time, additional justifications are required before flight due to hardware production discrepancies or specific needs for a mission: necessary relevance relies on competencies and experience.

Generally, there are three possible outcomes from a technical assessment: “acceptance as is”, “acceptance after extra investigation and justification” with positive conclusions, or “rejection” requiring a partial replacement or additional refurbishments.

Space transportation has stringent needs, there is little tolerance to failure, launch systems need to be incredibly robust to withstand extreme conditions and zero gravity. This requires deeper investigations that in other industries including more laboratory analysis and simulations to thoroughly understand all processes, this makes my job all the more interesting.

Now we are well advanced in the Ariane 6 first launch flight level 1 analysis, the availability of enriched launcher instrumentation from the flight is one of the most significant successes, providing real data for better understanding and anomaly-corrections working towards the launcher exploitation.

How long have you been involved in space transport and what were your tasks?

I have been involved in rocket launch activities for the past 24 years, with 18 years of experience in cryogenic propulsion with Ariane launchers and five years in launcher system engineering for both Ariane and Soyuz launch campaigns.

For these activities, I was involved in predicting engine system performance and optimisation, procurement management, launcher system flightworthiness assessment management and customer communication.