a mission to the Moon to mine regolith. In 2020, Arianespace suspended operations for nearly two months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Operations were suspended on 18 March and are, as of 29 April, expected to resume on 11 May. The return to operations will observe a number of new health and safety guidelines including social distancing in the workplace. Company and infrastructure Arianespace "is the marketing and sales organization for the European space industry and various component suppliers." The primary shareholders of Arianespace are its suppliers, in various European nations. Arianespace had 24 shareholders in 2008, 21 in 2014, and just 17 . In 2015, Arianespace shareholding was restructured due to the creation of Airbus Safran Launchers (later renamed ArianeGroup), which is tasked with developing and manufacturing the Ariane 6 carrier rocket. Industrial groups Airbus and Safran pooled their shares along with the French government's CNES stake to form a partnership company holding just under 74% of Arianespace shares, while the remaining 26% is spread across suppliers in nine countries including further Airbus subsidiaries. Corporate management , the Arianespace management team was: Regional offices Subsidiaries Arianespace inc. (U.S. Subsidiary) Arianespace Singapore PTE LTD. (Asian Subsidiary) Starsem S.A. (European-Russian Soyuz commercialization) Competition and pricing By 2004, Arianespace reportedly held more than 50% of the world market for boosting satellites to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). During the 2010s, the disruptive force represented by the new sector entrant SpaceX forced Arianespace to cut back on its workforce and focus on cost-cutting to decrease costs to remain competitive against the new low-cost entrant in the launch sector. In the midst of pricing pressure from such companies, during November 2013, Arianespace announced that it was enacting pricing flexibility for the "lighter satellites" that it carries to Geostationary orbits aboard its Ariane 5. According to Arianespace's managing director: "It's quite clear there's a very significant challenge coming from SpaceX (...) therefore things have to change (...) and the whole European industry is being restructured, consolidated, rationalised and streamlined." During early 2014, Arianespace was considering requesting additional subsidies from European governments to face competition from SpaceX and unfavorable changes in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate. The company had halved subsidy support by €100m per year since 2002 but the fall in the value of the US Dollar meant Arianespace was losing €60m per year due to currency fluctuations on launch contracts. SpaceX had reportedly begun to take