The launches include the Euclid space telescope and the Hera probe, a follow-up mission to NASA’s DART spacecraft that succeeded last month in altering the trajectory of a moon in the first test of a future planetary defense system.
“Member states have decided that Euclid and Hera should be launched on Falcon 9,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher told reporters after a meeting of the agency’s 22-nation ministerial council.
The launches will take place in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
Reuters reported in August that ESA had entered into preliminary technical discussions with SpaceX that could lead to the temporary use of its launchers after the conflict in Ukraine blocked Western access to Russian Soyuz rockets.
Industry sources had said that up to two launches could be affected by the switch from Soyuz to SpaceX.
A third payload that was supposed to ride on Soyuz – the Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer, or EarthCARE – will now be launched on Europe’s Vega C instead, Aschbacher said.
Built by Airbus on behalf of the European and Japanese space agencies, the EarthCARE satellite will be launched in early 2024 to fill a gap in scientific modeling of climate change.
ESA is still looking for alternatives for two other missions that were in the Soyuz launch pipeline.
Aschbacher made the announcement a day after ESA revealed a new Q4 2023 target for the first launch of Ariane 6, its latest launch vehicle, marking a delay of about six months.
The ESA had previously said Ariane 6 could slip into 2023 from 2022 without giving a more specific window, but it was widely understood to be aiming for early next year.
Originally slated for its first launch in 2020, the twin Ariane 6 variant was developed to counter lower-cost competition from SpaceX and preserve Europe’s independent access to space.
Europe has until now depended on the Italian Vega for small payloads, the Russian Soyuz for medium ones and the near-retirement Ariane 5 for heavy missions.
ESA announced on Wednesday that it plans to launch the three remaining Ariane 5 rockets in the first half of next year.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Alison Williams)
By Tim Hepher