Europe's Arianespace launch operator faces a repeat of early 2013's bottleneck for the Europeanized Russian Soyuz rocket but is less likely this year to be spared the chore of saying no to one customer in favor of another. Evry, France-based Arianespace is facing the further complication of the fact that launch delays caused by late-arriving satellites in 2013 - for Soyuz and for heavy-lift Ariane 5 rockets - have forced the company to plan a record of up to 14 launches this year. This includes seven or eight Ariane 5s, four Soyuz vehicles and one or two light-class Vega rockets. During a two-day space policy summit at the European Commission's headquarters here, European government officials made clear their preference that three Soyuz launches of Galileo positioning, navigation and timing satellites, and one of the Sentinel 1A radar spacecraft for Europe's Copernicus Earth observation system, take place this year.
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