ARIANE 5 Flight 501 Failure

FOREWORD On 4 June 1996, the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 launcher ended in a failure. Only about 40 seconds after initiation of the flight sequence, at an altitude of about 3700 m, the launcher veered off its flight path, broke up and exploded. Engineers from the Ariane 5 project teams of CNES and Industry immediately started to investigate the failure. Over the following days, the Director General of ESA and the Chairman of CNES set up an independent Inquiry Board and nominated the following members : The terms of reference assigned to the Board requested it-to determine the causes of the launch failure,-to investigate whether the qualification tests and acceptance tests were appropriate in relation to the problem encountered,-to recommend corrective action to remove the causes of the anomaly and other possible weaknesses of the systems found to be at fault.