ADELINE

Airbus Defence and Space’s Adeline (ADvanced Expendable Launcher with INnovative engine Economy) partly reusable space launcher programme is a concept.

Adeline is proposed to be semi reusable recovering its main engines and avionics of the launcher to be refurbished.

Although the project was started in 2010 there has not been much news although a date of 2025 has been rumored for flight hardware. Airbus is also involved in the new Ariane 6 rocket being developed by ESA as an interim response to SpaceX's semi reusable Falcon 9 and its associated low costs that is already flying, but the Ariane 6 is not due to be tested until after 2020 and SpaceX plan to have a fully reusable rocket using its new Raptor engines.

It will be interesting to see how the European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus responds to the current fast pace of change.