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The launch mission of two French and Spanish satellites on Tuesday, November 17, failed, causing losses estimated at 373 million dollars.
Arianespace, the company that operates the launch rocket, announced the mission failure soon after deviating from its trajectory.
The Vega rocket, named VV17, carried the French meteorological research satellite Taranis and the Spanish earth observation satellite SEOSAT-Ingenio.
Arianespace initiated the mission from its launch base in French Guiana, South America. After its failure, the launcher fell into an uninhabited area, the company announced. The French and Spanish satellites have been “lost”.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), the failure occurred during the fourth phase of the mission, approximately eight minutes after take-off.
Tomas Hamman, an aerospace expert, told Morocco World News that, based on preliminary data from Arianespace, the fault would have occurred at an altitude of around 180 kilometers.
The two countries planned that VV17 would take SEOSAT-Ingenio to an altitude of 670 kilometers and Taranis to 676 kilometers.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the incident may have occurred due to human error, rather than a flawed design. “Telemetry data is being analyzed to determine the cause of this error.”
The only time a Vega rocket failed, prior to yesterday’s crash, was Vega’s 15th mission, VV15, in July 2019. The launch mission involved the UAE’s Falcon Eye 1 satellite.
The Vega rockets previously put two Moroccan satellites into orbit. In November 2017, Mission VV11 launched Morocco’s Earth observation satellite, Mohammed VI-A.
In November 2018, Vega’s 13th flight, VV13, put the second Moroccan surveillance satellite, Mohammed VI-B, into orbit.
In addition to the financial losses from yesterday’s bankruptcy, estimated at $ 373 million, the failed mission could possibly dent the reputation of France-based satellite launch company Arianespace, especially with growing competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
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