Carine Leveau

A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique Féminine engineering school (today EPF), majoring in Aerospace, and the holder of a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, majoring in aerodynamics, Carine Leveau has spent her entire career working in aerospace.

She began her career as a system studies engineer, working for two years as a subcontractor for CNES and Aerospatiale—today ArianeGroup—on trajectories and performance for different vehicle concepts.

She then grasped the opportunity to move to the Guiana Space Centre as a range safety engineer. Ariane 4 was at this time operating at full pace, the first Ariane 5 variant was making its first flights from the centre and work was underway to qualify adaptations to ground support equipment in readiness for Ariane 5 Plus (ECA variant), still in service to this day.

In 2002, Carine Leveau joined CNES’s Launch Vehicles Directorate (DLA), where she was initially in charge of launcher flight mechanics, stage fallback and then guidance, navigation and control (GNC). She contributed to mission analyses for Ariane 5 flight programmes and her engineering expertise and close knowledge of the Guiana Space Centre led her to work on range safety.

In 2009, she was appointed to head the range safety, flight performance and control department at DLA’s engineering sub-directorate, where she was in charge of technical qualification of range safety regulations for the Soyuz and Vega launchers at the Guiana Space Centre. She was then system project leader for Ariane 5 ES-ATV, for which she headed work on the deorbiting of the launcher’s upper stage—the first active deorbiting of this kind in Europe.

During the course of 2013, she was appointed deputy head of the engineering sub-directorate, where she managed engineering work on several launcher preliminary projects, notably for Ariane 6.

End 2015, she was appointed head of the engineering sub-directorate, remaining in this post until end 2021.