{"id":11712,"date":"2021-04-28T23:12:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T15:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/vega-rockets-return-to-flight-launch-set-for-wednesday-night\/"},"modified":"2021-04-28T23:12:18","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T15:12:18","slug":"vega-rockets-return-to-flight-launch-set-for-wednesday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/vega-rockets-return-to-flight-launch-set-for-wednesday-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Vega rocket\u2019s return-to-flight launch set for Wednesday night"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The payload shroud containing six satellites set for launch on a European Vega rocket Wednesday night. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 G. Barbaste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Six satellites are set to ride a light-class European Vega rocket into orbit from French Guiana on Wednesday night, the first Vega launch since a failure last year that officials attributed to human error.<\/p>\n

The prime payload on the four-stage Vega launcher is Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3, a high-resolution Earth-imaging satellite built and owned by Airbus. Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 is the first of four French-built next-generation Pl\u00e9iades with sharp eyes and the ability to rapidly beam their reconnaissance imagery back to military, scientific, and commercial customers.<\/p>\n

Five smaller payloads for the Norwegian Space Agency, NanoAvionics, Spire, and Eutelsat will accompany Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 into orbit on top of the Vega launcher.<\/p>\n

Liftoff from the European-run Guiana Space Center is set for 9:50:47 p.m. EDT Wednesday (10:50:47 p.m. local time), or 0150 GMT Thursday. It will be the 18th flight of a Vega rocket since 2012, and the first launch from the equatorial spaceport in South America this year.<\/p>\n

The launch is crucial for Arianespace, the French launch services firm that oversees Vega launches, and Italy-based Vega prime contractor Avio. Two of the last three Vega rockets have failed to place their payloads into orbit, for different reasons.<\/p>\n

After 14 straight successful flight since its debut launch, a Vega rocket lost control about two minutes after liftoff in July 2019 with the Falcon Eye 1 military surveillance satellite for the United Arab Emirates. The launcher and payload crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

Investigators traced the cause of the accident to a \u201cthermo-structural failure\u201d on the forward dome of the Vega rocket\u2019s solid-fueled second stage, allowing hot gas to damage the motor\u2019s casing and leading to the in-flight breakup of the launch vehicle.<\/p>\n

Engineers beefed up thermal insulation and improved quality control checks, and the next Vega launch in September 2020 successfully placed 53 small commercial and government satellites into orbit, a record number of payloads on a single Arianespace mission.<\/p>\n

But failure struck again on the next Vega launch Nov. 16.<\/p>\n

Engineers determined a problem on the rocket\u2019s liquid-fueled fourth stage caused the loss of the Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite and the French space agency\u2019s Taranis research satellite.<\/p>\n

Officials concluded that cables leading to thrust vector control actuators on the Vega\u2019s Attitude and Vernier Upper Module, or AVUM, were inverted, a mistake from the assembly of the upper stage engine. The thrust vector control system pivots the upper stage engine nozzle to direct thrust, allowing the rocket to control its orientation and steering.<\/p>\n

Quality control checks before the launch missed the cable installation error, which caused the engine to move its nozzle in the wrong direction in response to commands from the rocket\u2019s guidance system. That resulted in the rocket losing control and tumbling just after ignition of the upper stage engine around eight minutes after launch with the SEOSAT-Ingenio and Taranis satellites.<\/p>\n

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A Vega launcher stands on its launch pad in French Guiana last year. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 P. Piron<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Officials from Arianespace and the European Space Agency, which led the failure investigation, stressed last year that the failure on the Nov. 16 launch was attributable to human error, and not a design fault like the one that caused the July 2019 launch mishap.<\/p>\n

Misleading instructions and inadequate preflight checks caused teams to overlook wrongly-installed cables on the launcher\u2019s upper stage steering system, officials said.<\/p>\n

Managers ordered additional inspections of already-built rocket components to ensure they are free of the problem that caused the failure in November, clearing the way for a resumption of Vega missions.<\/p>\n

Arianespace has found success in selling Vega launches to ESA and the European Commission, which owns Europe\u2019s fleet of Copernicus environmental satellites. National space agencies across Europe and in other parts of the world have also purchased rides on Vega rocket for their small satellites.<\/p>\n

Startups and other commercial satellite operators have also secured slots on Vega rideshare missions, including the launch set to blast off Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

The Vega rocket stands about 98 feet (30 meters) tall and is capable of delivering about 3,300 pounds (1.5 metric tons) of payload to a 435-mile-high (700-kilometer) sun-synchronous orbit.<\/p>\n

An upgraded version called the Vega C will feature larger first and second stage motors, plus a widened payload berth, increasing the rocket\u2019s payload carrying capacity to about 4,850 pounds (2.2 metric tons) to the same orbit. The first Vega C launch is now scheduled for early 2022.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 satellite and five secondary payloads are encapsulated inside the Vega rocket\u2019s payload fairing in French Guiana. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 G. Barbaste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Vega rocket flying Wednesday night will blast off from the Guiana Space Center and head north over the Atlantic Ocean, targeting a polar orbit with its six satellite payloads.<\/p>\n

The rocket\u2019s three solid-fueled boost stages will fire and burn out in succession in the first six minutes of the mission, leaving the AVUM upper stage\u2019s hydrazine-fed engine to maneuver the six satellites into orbit.<\/p>\n

A first firing by the AVUM engine will cut off about 16 minutes after liftoff, and the rocket will coast over the North Pole and head south on the other side of the world before reigniting at Plus+52 minutes.<\/p>\n

That will set the stage for deployment of the 2,028-pound (920-kilogram) Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 satellite at Plus+54 minutes, 29 seconds. The rocket will aim to release Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 into a 390-mile-high (628-kilometer) sun-synchronous orbit with an inclination of 97.89 degrees to the equator.<\/p>\n

Two more AVUM engine burns will reduce the rocket\u2019s altitude to 380 miles (613 kilometers) and adjust its inclination to 97.79 degrees before deployment of the remaining five satellites at T+plus 1 hour, 41 minutes.<\/p>\n

The Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 spacecraft will improve on Airbus\u2019s first-generation Pl\u00e9iades Earth observation satellites launched in 2011 and 2012. Another Vega launch later this year will carry the Pl\u00e9iades Neo 4 satellite into orbit, and a Vega C launch in 2022 will loft the final two Pl\u00e9iades Neo payloads on a single mission, taking advantage of the new rocket\u2019s increased capabilities.<\/p>\n

Airbus says it entirely funded the development of the Pl\u00e9iades Neo satellites, with intentions to sell the imagery commercially to private companies and government users. The company assembled the spacecraft at its facility in Toulouse, France.<\/p>\n

\u201cPl\u00e9iades Neo is a game changer for Airbus and its geo-intelligence customers,\u201d said Jean-Marc Nasr, head of space systems at Airbus. \u201cThanks to our disruptive and bold investments we can offer a state of the art constellation delivering 30cm (11.8-inch) resolution imagery in near real-time, opening up a completely new range of applications to give our customers more detail, more quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The imaging resolution of Airbus\u2019s four Pl\u00e9iades Neo satellites is comparable to the resolution provided by Maxar\u2019s six-satellite WorldView Legion surveillance satellites due to begin launching later this year. The companies are competitors, providing the highest-resolution Earth observation imagery on the global commercial market.<\/p>\n

With the help of laser inter-satellite communications links, the Pl\u00e9iades Neo satellites will be able to respond rapidly to tasking requests within 30 to 40 minutes, according to Airbus.<\/p>\n

The five rideshare payloads on Wednesday night\u2019s mission are mounted to a fixture below the Pl\u00e9iades Neo 3 satellite inside the Vega rocket\u2019s Swiss-made payload fairing.<\/p>\n

They include Norsat 3, a 35-pound (16-kilogram) Norwegian Space Agency satellite that fuses an experimental on-board radar detector with a Automatic Identification System receiver to track maritime ship traffic.<\/p>\n

There is also a briefcase-sized satellite built by NanoAvionics integrated with a radio frequency characterization payload from Denver-based startup Aurora Insight. The Bravo satellite, set for launch on the Vega rocket, joins the identical Charlie smallsat that flew into orbit on a SpaceX rideshare mission in January.<\/p>\n

Two commercial CubeSats \u2014 also about the size of a briefcase \u2014 are on-board to join Spire\u2019s ship tracking and commercial weather data collection fleet.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a small pathfinder satellite on the Vega rocket for Eutelsat\u2019s planned constellation of narrowband data relay satellites. The ELO Alpha spacecraft, built by California-based Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, will allow Eutelsat to gauge how low Earth orbit satellites might augment services provided by the company\u2019s large geostationary communications satellites.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The payload shroud containing six satellites set for launch on a European Vega rocket Wednesday night. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 G. Barbaste Six satellites are set to ride a light-class European Vega rocket into orbit from French Guiana on Wednesday night, the first Vega launch since a failure last year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[941,1657,1756,498,1244,1757,291,1608],"class_list":["post-11712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airbus","tag-airbus-defense-and-space","tag-ais","tag-arianespace","tag-avio","tag-bravo","tag-commercial-space","tag-cubesats"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}