SyLEx

SyLEx, short for Système de Lancement d’Expériences or Experiment Launch System, is a French sounding rocket developed by ArianeGroup for the French defence procurement agency DGA. It gives France a sovereign suborbital flight capability, which the country had lacked since 1979, and was commissioned in 2021 partly to flight-test the V-MAX hypersonic glider. The system comes in two versions. Block 1 is a single-stage rocket about 10 metres tall and 0.7 metre wide that lifts 300 kilograms to 200 kilometres and gives four to five minutes of microgravity. Block 2 is a two-stage rocket about 15 metres tall that lifts 600 kilograms to 400 kilometres and gives more than six minutes of microgravity. Both stages burn a solid propellant block called SPARK. The first flight, of the single-stage version, took place on the night of 27 to 28 November 2025 from the Landes test centre at Biscarrosse, and the two-stage version is planned for 2027.