The European rocket Vega suffers its second failure in three launches: Spaceflight Now

A European Vega rocket crashed to Earth shortly after launch from French Guiana, carrying a Spanish terrestrial imaging satellite and a French research probe with a combined value of nearly $ 400 million.

Both satellites were destroyed in the crash, the second launch failure in the last three flights of the European Vega rocket program.

The 98-foot (30-meter) tall Vega launcher took off from the Guiana European Space Center in South America at 20:52:20 EST on Monday (0152:20 GMT on Tuesday). Heading north over the Atlantic Ocean, three stages of solid-fuel rockets fired in succession to boost the Vega rocket and its two satellite payloads to nearly 17,000 mph – nearly 7.6 kilometers per second – just under the speed required to reach the ‘orbit.

A liquid-powered upper stage – known as the Attitude and Vernier Upper Module, or AVUM – was supposed to fire four times Monday night to position Spain’s SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite and French space agency CNES’s Taranis research space probe. different orbits at an altitude of approximately 420 miles (676 kilometers).

But something went wrong right after the first AVUM stage was switched on.

“After the first nominal ignition of the last stage engine, an anomaly occurred, which caused a deviation of the trajectory that resulted in the loss of the mission,” Avio, the first Italian contractor for the Vega rocket, said in a statement. “Data are being analyzed to determine the causes.”

A live webcast produced by Arianespace, the launch operator of the Vega rocket, showed the launcher flying normally in the first eight minutes of the mission. Soon after the director of operations inside the launch control center called for the AVUM’s upper stage ignition, data displayed on the webcast showed that the rocket was losing speed and deviating from its planned trajectory.

Arianespace has put the webcast on hold to evaluate the rocket’s data. The webcast then resumed and Arianespace confirmed that the launch was unsuccessful.

“We can now confirm that the mission is lost,” said Stéphane Israël, CEO of Arianespace. “Eight minutes after take-off, and immediately after starting the engine of the fourth Vega stage – the AVUM stage – we observed a degradation of the trajectory.

“It means that the speed was no longer nominal, so we have observed this degradation,” continued Israël.

If it reached orbit, the rocket’s upper stage would have had to fly over the Galliot ground station in the French Guiana spaceport just over an hour and a half after launch. Ground teams received no signals from the rocket.

“I want to offer my sincere apologies to my clients for this mission,” said Israël. “So sad for ESA and for Spain, and for CNES… Now we have to analyze, understand. Our experts are now consolidating the data they have and we will gather a press conference (Wednesday). “

Arianespace oversees the launches of the light-class Vega rocket, the heavy-duty Ariane 5 rocket and Russian middle-class Soyuz vehicles from French Guiana.

The Vega rocket is capable of placing up to 3,300 pounds – 1.5 metric tons – of payload in a 435-mile (700-kilometer) high polar orbit. The Vega program has made 14 consecutive successful flights since the rocket’s inaugural launch in 2012.

But a Vega rocket failed in a July 2019 mission with the Falcon Eye 1 military spy satellite to the UAE. Investigators identified the cause of a “thermostructural failure” on the front dome of the solid fuel second stage of the Vega rocket, which led to the launch vehicle crashing in flight.

The Vega rocket returned to service with a successful launch on September 2 that delivered 53 small satellites into orbit for numerous international customers. In addition to signaling the return to service of the Vega rocket, the rideshare launch on September 2 demonstrated a new multi-satellite distributor aimed at helping Arianespace attract smaller satellite launch businesses.

An upgraded rocket named Vega C with more powerful first and second stage engines is slated for first launch in mid-2021. The Vega C will be capable of carrying up to 50% more payload mass in orbit with respect to the basic version of the Vega rocket.

The AVUM upper stage structure is manufactured by Airbus, and Ukrainian missile contractors Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash supply the AVUM stage’s main engine, which consumes hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants.

The Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio satellite traveled in the upper position of the Vespa dual payload dispenser of the Vega rocket, while the French research payload Taranis was launched into the lower berth of the Vega payload cover.

SEOSAT-Ingenio, built by Airbus in Spain, weighed about 1,650 pounds (750 kilograms), according to a statement released by Arianespace. Carrying two optical cameras, the satellite was designed with an image resolution of approximately 8.2 feet, or 2.5 meters, in black and white. Its cameras were expected to take photos along stretches of 55 kilometers wide.

The spacecraft’s observation instrument would also collect data in the blue, green, red, and near-infrared wavelengths, and the satellite was designed to be able to look sideways at regions of the image on each side of its track at soil. The mission data was supposed to help scientists, policy makers, and other users track changes in land use.

Designed primarily for civilian use, SEOSAT-Ingenio was expected to collect images for the European Commission’s Copernicus program, which includes a fleet of dedicated Sentinel environmental monitoring satellites. As a contributing mission in the Copernicus fleet, SEOSAT-Ingenio was supposed to integrate data collected by Sentinel satellites distributed worldwide and free of charge.

“SEOSAT is a very versatile satellite and serves many application domains, from agriculture to disaster management, even fishing, forest fires, there are many (areas) where SEOSAT can be used,” said Josef Aschbacher, director Earth observation programs at the European Space Agency, prior to launch.

ESA managed the development of the SEOSAT-Ingenio on behalf of the Spanish government, which financed the mission and owned the satellite. ESA also organized the data pipeline to distribute SEOSAT-Ingenio images to global users, and ESA operators in Germany were prepared to oversee the satellite’s early activation and commissioning after launch, prior to launch. hand over control to Spanish engineers.

Designed for a mission of at least seven years, the spacecraft was primarily supposed to capture images over Spain, other parts of Europe, North Africa and Latin America. But SEOSAT-Ingenio’s orbit would have allowed worldwide coverage and its geographic reach would have spanned the globe.

“SEOSAT-Ingenio will help us better understand climate change,” Aschbacher said ahead of the launch. “For example, an important parameter in climate change is land use change, the shift from agricultural to urban areas or from wooded to non-forested areas. SEOSAT, through its routine operations and routine monitoring of the earth’s surface, certainly helps a lot to better understand a very important parameter of climate change “.

Another goal of the SEOSAT-Ingenio project, initiated by the Spanish government in 2007, was to promote a growing Spanish space industry. According to Lomba Ferreras, about 80% of the spacecraft was manufactured in Spain, while the previous Spanish government satellites were only about half produced in Spain.

Juan Carlos Cortés, director of space and dual programs at the Spanish Center for the Development of Industrial Technology, helped the SEOSAT-Ingenio project cost around 200 million euros, or $ 236 million.

The French research satellite Taranis was designed to trace the origins of mysterious light phenomena above thunderstorms. These transient light events, or TLEs, are electrical discharges that last only milliseconds, and scientists are unsure of the mechanisms and physics that produce them.

TLEs that manifest as red sprites and blue jets are sometimes seen on dark nights, especially from airplanes. Phenomena known as elves are the most difficult to detect and require special photographic equipment.

Long theorized with sporadic word-of-mouth observations, bright electrical bursts above thunderstorms were first documented in 1989 by ground-based observations and instruments on the space shuttle. Scientists know little about how the discharges are triggered or how they reach the atmosphere so high, near the edge of space.

Taranis, led by the French space agency CNES, allegedly attempted to untangle what triggers these brief flashes over thunderstorms and how TLEs could affect conditions within the atmosphere or in space.

The 175-pound (175-kilogram) Taranis satellite “will be able to detect these phenomena and record their light and radiation signatures with fine resolution, as well as the electromagnetic disturbances they generate in the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere,” he said. CNES in a press release ahead of the failed launch.

Instruments aboard Taranis included cameras, X-ray and gamma-ray detectors, electron detectors, a magnetometer, and sensors to detect plasma and electric fields in space.

Built for a two- to four-year mission, Taranis would also study Earth’s gamma-ray bursts, or TGFs, short bursts of gamma-ray photons observed from thunderstorms around the world.

“Taranis is the first space mission that combines optical, gamma, energetic particles and electrical and magnetic measurements to improve our understanding of these phenomena,” said Jean-Louis Pinçon, scientific director of the Taranis mission of CNRS, the national research center French scientific. “Eventually, once we fully understand the generation mechanisms, we will have the opportunity to estimate the real impacts of TLE and TGF on the physics and chemistry of the upper atmosphere.”

The CNES has spent about 115 million euros, or $ 136 million, on the Taranis project since its beginning in 2010, Pinçon said.

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