[ad_1]
WASHINGTON – The upper stage of a Vega rocket malfunctioned minutes after takeoff on November 16 from French Guiana, causing the loss of two satellites in the rocket’s second failure in its last three launches.
The Vega rocket took off from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana at 8:53 pm east with a mission designated VV17 by Arianespace. The initial stages of the launch appeared to be going well, but observers noted that the rocket appeared to diverge from its planned trajectory during the first combustion of the rocket’s Avum upper stage.
Two hours after the launch, Arianespace confirmed that the launch had failed. “Eight minutes after the take-off of the Vega VV17 mission, following the first ignition of the Avum upper stage engine, a trajectory deviation was identified, resulting in the loss of the mission,” the company said in a statement. “Telemetry data is being analyzed to determine the cause of this error.”
The company did not disclose any other details about the bankruptcy, but said it will hold a briefing on November 17 to provide more information.
Avum is a liquid propellant upper stage used to place payloads into orbit and then perform maneuvers. In this launch, Avum was expected to perform five burns in one hour and 45 minutes while deploying the payload of two satellites.
The upper stage is integrated by Avio, Vega’s prime contractor. The facility is provided by Airbus Defense and Space and the propulsion system by the Ukrainian company Yuzhnoye.
Failure is the second in three rolls for Vega, after its first 14 rolls were successful. A launch in July 2019 carrying an imaging satellite to the UAE was lost due to a structural failure in the rocket’s second solid fuel stage.
Vega did not return to flight until September 2, when the VV16 mission launched 53 smallsats on a dedicated rideshare mission. The rocket’s return has been delayed for months since the closure of the Kourou spaceport during the coronavirus pandemic, and then due to unfavorable weather.
Two European research satellites were lost in the launch failure. The 750 kilorgam SEOSAT-Ingenio, announced as the first Earth observation satellite in Spain, was built by Airbus Defense and Space to provide wide-field imagery for civil applications. The 175-kilogram TARANIS, or LightNIng and Sprites Radiation Analysis Tool, was built by the French space agency CNES to study electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere created by thunderstorms.
Prior to this failure, Vega’s next launch, VV18, was scheduled for early 2021, featuring the Pléiades-Neo 1 imaging satellite and a series of smallsat secondary payloads.
Source link
